Oral history interview with Graciela Sanchez, 2004 June 25-July 2

Format: Originally recorded on 5 sound discs. Duration is 5 hr., 30 min.

Collection Summary: An interview of Graciela Sanchez conducted 2004 June 25-July 2, by Cary Cordova, for the Archives of American Art, in San Antonio, Tex.

Sánchez speaks of her family background, her family's move to Chicago, return to San Antonio, and cultural traditions; San Antonios Chili Queens; activism in the community; high school, attending Yale University; MEChA; Gloria Anzaldúa and This Bridge Called My Back; working for the Southwest Voter Registration Project; MALDEF, Mexican American Legal Defense; the foundation of Esperanza Peace and Justice Center with Susan Guerra and others; going to Cuba to study film; the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center; the values of being "buena gente," "good people"; Ellas, a Latina lesbian organization; working with Amy Kastely, lawyer; Mujer Artes; her film "No Porque lo Diga Fidel Castro"; working for AIDS prevention/education; the newsletter "The Interchange" which became "La Voz de Esperanza"; Stonehaven Ranch, a retreat location; the film screenings "Other America"; the complete de-funding of Esperanza in 1997 and the four year litigation with the city of San Antonio; trying to save the building La Gloria and other endeavors taken on by the Esperanza; the Cuentos Project and recent events sponsored by the Esperanza. Sánchez also recalls Audre Lorde, Luz Calvo, Eduardo Diaz, Liliana Wilson Grez, Cherríe Moraga, Cynthia Perez, Genevieve Vaughn, Franco Mondini-Ruiz, and others.

Biographical/Historical Note: Graciela Sanchez (1960- ) is an arts activist and the executive director of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in San Antonio, Tex. Cary Cordova (1970- ) is an art historian from Austin, Tex.

This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.

This interview is part of the series "Recuerdos Orales: Interviews of the Latino Art Community in Texas," supported by Federal funds for Latino programming, administered by the Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives.
The digital preservation of this interview received Federal support from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center.

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Interview Transcript

This transcript is in the public domain and may be used without permission. Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Graciela Sanchez, 2004 June 25-July 2, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Recuerdos Orales: Interviews
of the Latino Art Community in Texas

Interview with Graciela Sanchez
Conducted by Cary Cordova
San Antonio, Texas
June 25 and July 2, 2004

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview
with Graciela Sanchez on June 25 and July 2, 2004. The interview took place
in San Antonio, Texas and was conducted by Cary Cordova for the Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Recuerdos
Orales: Interviews of the Latino Art Community in Texas.

This transcript has been lightly edited. The reader should bear in mind that
he or she is reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose.

Interview

CARY CORDOVA: All right, we are recording. This is Cary Cordova for the Archives
of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. I am interviewing Graciela Sánchez
at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center [922 San Pedro, San Antonio] on June
25th, 2004. This is Disc One, Session One. And with that – with that intro
– let me just ask you, Graciela, when and where were you born?

GRACIELA SÁNCHEZ: I was born here in San Antonio on April 24th, 1960
at the Baptismal Memorial Hospital – [laughs] – half a mile down
from here.

MS. CORDOVA: And were your parents born here as well?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: My mom was born here 1923 – she will be turning
81 on July 1st, and my father was born in Tampico, but again, his father was
born in San Antonio and his grandfather, great-grandfather. So I think on my
dad’s side, we still go U.S. at least, you know, somewhere in the 1850s
or whatever, and he – his dad was born in San Antonio in 1900 in the same
neighborhood where they still live. So it’s just that they skipped that
generation because of the Depression and go down – he goes in from the
Depression – my grandfather – to Tampico to try to make a living
and then later on in life, they come back – in the ‘40s –
they come back to San Antonio.

MS. CORDOVA: So your father’s family already had strong ties here in
San Antonio?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yes, San Antonio and I guess Laredo, although I don’t
know much of that history.

MS. CORDOVA: How did your parents meet?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Through my paternal grandmother, who was showing off her
sailor son in 19 – probably at the end of the war, something like that
– 40 – well, actually probably around ‘47 or something like
that. So, again, both my mom and my father have roots on Veracruz Street, which
is where they still live, and so met my mom on her way to work, which is right
there in Guadalupe, in Salinas – that is a little corner store –
was walking to work. And Samira [?] Sánchez stopped there and said, here,
meet my son because you are very pretty and – [laughs] – and that
was it. And they just – my mom was very, you know, just noticed this very
respectful man with lots of manners and just thought him a very nice man, and
my father I guess just kind of liked my mom. And they just started courting,
which is not what my grandmother wanted because my mom is very dark-skinned
so of course she never expected that, you know. It was just an introduction
– [laughs] – nothing more than that. I think later on in life, you
know – I mean the consistency that my grandmother kind of wasn’t
happy that my dad married this dark-skinned –

MS. CORDOVA: How did that appear?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: I think – well, my mom has really been – again,
I keep on trying to find those – that magic and those secrets and that
wisdom from my mom because she didn’t ever say negative things about my
grandmother growing up, so I never grew up to resent her. But I think in those
little stories every once in a while, if you ask a little closer and dig a little
deeper, you will find that, you know, my grandmother said some hurtful things
and so – you know, in the late ‘40s, ‘50s, and my mom and
my dad moved to Chicago, which is where my grandparents then moved to, you know,
on my dad’s side. And so she was away from – my mom was away from
her own mother in San Antonio, and the way she tried to resolve those problems
was to write letters to her mom and say, you know, here is what is happening
with the in-law. And my grandmother would write back and say, find out what
her favorite food is, cook her that food for her and give it to her –
you know, so ways to just continue to be loving and giving and just kind of
forget those hurtful things and just try to win her over on some level rather
than saying anything negative.

And so that was just a constant practice, and to this day, my mom – you
know, by having a hard time, you must make your enemies your friends or whatever.
That is not as easy, I think, because, one thing is to have a mother-in-law
and you want to try a little bit harder and then, you know, when you are fighting
against the politicians that hate your – the right wing that hates the
progressive left wing – you know, it might be a little bit hard. But anyway
– so that is – those are the signs about, you know, kind of –
just those – through the tías [dad’s sisters] – or
actually my dad’s sisters and maybe brothers – there were moments
that – if they were eight, nine, ten growing up, they would be mean to
my mother. And so that is kind of the little ways that I found out. You know,
and they would always blame their mother for saying, well, my mom says you are
ugly, or, my mom doesn’t like that you got married to my brother, or something.
So, I mean, you know, now these women are in their 60s and 70s and my mom is
the matriarch, you know, and is respected and loved because their mother died
20 years ago or so, so my mom has been the person that they look to if they
are living in San Antonio or they visit from Chicago.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, that’s a good question. I think, again, my
grandfather – Adrian is my dad’s father – Adrian Sánchez
– he was an auto mechanic. He was also a sergeant in World War I and was
stationed here in Fort Sam [Houston, Texas], and I think, again, he just probably
traveled, you know? He was going to find a job, he was going to try to raise
kids, and so – so yeah, he moves from here to Tampico, but then they come
back up through Monterey and come back here to San Antonio to try to make it
here. I guess it’s not good here, so then they move up to Chicago and
follow the stream, I guess, that many other people were following. Then they
stayed there for a long time. I think my grandparents – my dad’s
side of the family came back to San Antonio in the ‘70s, so – I
mean, again, some of their children are still there. They are my aunts and uncles,
but most of them started coming back. But my dad was the one that just lived
there for two years and just came back with my mom. And so we – from the
Sánchez side of the family, we were kind of more isolated. You know,
my mom’s side was definitely here, and still is here. So, again, it’s
just – maybe it’s mechanics really couldn’t find jobs.

MS. CORDOVA: Yeah, and then your father had been enlisted in –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: He joined World War II as a 17-year-old just to get out
of the house, I think. He probably – it wasn’t necessarily a healthy
– I mean, he doesn’t talk about it, but, you know, he probably just
didn’t want to be around. And as he had come here in San Antonio as a
13-year-old, I think, they could be put into elementary-school-age to learn,
so I think he found it very awkward to be this teen with, you know, a lot of
elementary school kids. You know, by 15 or 16 – you know, junior high
was also now into high school then, right, so he was able to be in those classes,
but he was just a little awkward and I think he just wanted to join, so he joined
a year before. But it was at the end of the war, essentially. He was born in
‘28, so he was 17, I guess, in ‘45 or something like that. I haven’t
figured it out.

But what he ended up doing seemed to be a lot – he, you know –
well, actually I want to say, a lot of parades – [laughs] – you
know. He got to go around to, you know, to all those little ports in California
and Washington, Oregon ports, and then I know that he did – that the Navy
moved around and got to see other parts of the world, too, but his – you
know, I knew that there was a gun that blew, and his hearing is really bad and
all that sort of stuff, but he was never – I never heard of major combats
– sort of, you know, anything like that, but it was more about pretty
girls and parades. But, you know, like a lot of men his age, they do talk about
that time of World War II and in order to –

MS. CORDOVA: Right and he was probably stationed in the Pacific.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Right, on that side. And he didn’t have tattoos,
and I found out just last Sunday that part of it was that he – a lot of
his friends got tattoos and they all got sick because they were – it was
a bad –

[Audio break.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: So yeah – so basically, he just saw everybody else
get sick from an infected needle and so he just kind of pulled away from –
you know, from probably having a tattoo. And I was wondering because everybody
else I know that was in the military in the ‘40s, you know, has a tattoo
and he doesn’t have anything like that. You know, again, he was also grounded,
I think, in his early childhood, having been born and raised in Tampico or in
Mexico. So, I mean, I use – I always am curious about, again, where we
come from and why we become who we become, you know, and I think that whole
sense of cultural grounding that I talk about kind of speaks to, like, just
the differences between my mom and my dad in terms of, you know, their sense
of who they are. My dad really – besides being a man, and I guess that
helps – because that is the way this society works.

But the sense of being a Mexicano, but also very much a U.S. citizen, but just
– you know, always thinking it’s important to speak Spanish, always
thinking it’s important to maintain cultural traditions, and he thought
us to sing Las Mañanitas and all those other songs and created a little
choir when I was, like, seven and eight and nine, and, you know, took all the
neighbors and my brother’s friends, my sister and myself and, you know,
others just to learn all these little songs, and then to give those songs as
presents to all our mothers on Mother’s Day, and then taught us songs
from Las Posadas and yet another moment and so we were able to sing at churches
and – or the church that we were going to and, you know, to follow up
and do those sorts of things. As a little girl, I mean, my first dancing instructor
was my father. He learned to dance growing up, again, trying to hustle in the
streets of Tampico, and he said one time he was rounding a corner and heard
this music and saw this Afro-Cubano dancing at one of the cantinas, and he just
fell in love with the guy’s dancing and he says, teach me, and so this
man, you know, taught my dad how to dance. Because I always thought it was my
grandmother because, again, mothers teach – usually it’s through
the mothers that the culture seems to be passed, you know, but it was like the
staff of Afro-Cubano that taught him in the ports of Tampico.

So, again, I know that dancing happened within my Sánchez family because
they’re all dancers, but he told me, it was a southern man that taught
him. So anyway, my dad taught all his children how to dance as well. So it was
just kind of fun to kind of learn those sorts of things that I thought were
– I just took for granted; I just thought it happened in everybody’s
household. Not so.

MS. CORDOVA: And what kind of cultural traditions did your mother give you?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, I guess it was – we talked about that and hers
tended to be more San Antonio or Norteño based. My grandmother on my
mom’s side was an orphan and kind of got pulled from Monterey when she
was about a year old and brought to San Antonio because – here’s
the story; let’s see – so my great grandmother, Teresita, I guess
couldn’t have children, or wasn’t having children because I don’t
know of any other great aunt or anything like that, but – so her husband
was in Monterey once and kept on seeing this little girl in front of a house
that seemed to be abandoned, and so he knocked on the door and said, it looks
like you’re abandoning this kid, and will you give her to me? And so she
was just given to my great-grandfather and he brought her over, and that’s
who I get to know as my grandmother my Abeulita Panchita.

And so – and it seems like she was young, and there’s a picture
of her as a 16-year-old or such with a little parasol and an American flag in
the back, and it’s probably a July 4th celebration. So somehow she was
getting into the groove of San Antonio, I mean, because that’s what she
knew, I guess. But I don’t – that was kind of on some level –
I was going to say assimilated but that’s not the word because, again,
she only grew up in this culture but I guess took on whatever was contemporary
and was having fun. She was born, I guess, in 1893 so I’m not sure what
it was that she was up to at age 16 but just having fun, but she ended up being
– she did lots of jobs like most women, and so did her mother. My great-grandmother
Teresita seemed to be a businesswoman who was probably one of the “chili
queens.” And, again, we don’t know too much about that but that
she did set up a spa and have a couple of other women helping her and lived
downtown close by to the Spanish governor’s palace, and moved away from
downtown when the flood of 1921 comes around. So it seems like a lot of people
were wiped out or maybe got scared and moved.

Maybe she had already bought a lot of land in the west side, or something like
that, but the west side seems to be a little bit higher up and safer in the
area that they selected, so she moved into that west side. And my grandmother
also – great-grandmother also had tenants, like I guess she rented a room
and then whoever she rented it from said, “Oh, you can subdivide and make
some extra money by bringing in these borders.” So they talk about a couple
of boarders that ended up being famous, wealthy Mexicans, like one of the guys
that started one of the – como se llaman? – where they slaughter
the – the slaughterhouses of the west side, the mantanzas, right. So one
of those guys ended up being very wealthy, and later in life when my grandmother
needs some operation, they go to him and ask him for some sort of loan and the
man just gives it away: it reminds me of when you took care of me way back when,
when I got started, so I’m going to give you this and send you up to my
doctor or something like that.

So that’s how my great-grandmother was a businesswoman, and so my grandmother
I guess kind of learned the same sort of thinking and washing clothes, becoming
a nurse’s aid and whatever the job that needed to be done, because she
gets that good work ethic, because people liked her and kind of pulled her into
different directions, so she had those sorts of experiences.

And I know that she was – my grandmother, my mom’s mom, married
three times, and so, again, it’s like to know my mother, my grandmother
would have just married once, because my mom just had this traditional sort
of – what Ronald Reagan would probably love. But her mother had married
three times – I guess she got married when she was 15 and then left that
guy for whatever reason. The second guy she met in Oklahoma and married him,
because I guess he – no, he was chasing after her and she was just looking
– trying to stay alive I guess at that time and ran away from him and
came back to San Antonio and he followed her back to San Antonio and told her
to help him set up a store in San Antonio, and she ended up having to marry
him because she had said, yes, she would marry him, but she didn’t really
want to marry him, and helped him set up that store and basically made it go
under, because he was a businessman – I guess he owned a restaurant or
a little store in Oklahoma.

And then I guess after a while they split up and then the third one was the
grandfather that I get to know, who was the Casillas. So there was – Benavidez
was the first one; Martinez was the second one – and that was my mom’s
dad; she never knew him – and Casillas was the third one who basically
raised my mom.

And so, again, it’s just – you asked that about what was the culture.

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.] Actually, though, for me I know that the “chili
queens” were an important here in San Antonio, but maybe you could explain
why or what that lore is about the chili queens.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, I think these were Mexicana women trying to, again,
make a living in San Antonio and downtown was where everything happened, from
the Alamo down to where the Mercado is and the Mercado and the Plaza del Zacate,
which I guess is known as the hay market in translation, something like that,
and that that Plaza del Zacate was the area, I think, that my great-grandmother
worked. And so, vendors coming from all over the region and being hungry and
needing to eat, so the women put out their puestos and I guess the chili con
carne is what they’re talking about in terms of the “chili queens.”
And so it was – I understand that that wasn’t the only thing. It
was just basically a puesto for the men, or the tamales and chili con carnes
to whatever else the mujeres would want to cook, and they had – they all
had good businesses and were doing fine, and then I think from the competitive
business – white businessman they probably got a little angry that they
were – at least that’s what we hear from our own stories, that they
got upset and basically wanted to get rid of them because they were taking away
business from them. So they started to impose all these health permits and so
basically wiped out the women from the downtown area.

And yet, apparently the “chili queens” were so famous that, again,
more of the white businessmen kind of exoticized them and pulled a few of them
to go up to the Chicago World’s Fair [1893] in, I think, 1898, or the
1890s, and so that’s how they kind of got more of a national prominence
in the storytelling, and yet they were basically wiped out. And so what I say
is then they don’t come back until, again, it’s just the sort remaking
of the history of these women. And so nowadays that all have their little stalls
and they charge a lot of money, and they do have to follow city code, and they’re
only there on weekends and are allowed to be there on weekends. And that’s
it. But it’s not the same re-creation of that time period.

I think we hear that people like Lydia Mendoza and a lot of the troubadours
of that time, for nickels and pennies used to – while the women cooked
their food and people ate, these other folks came around and sang for them.
So, again, you can imagine Mexico more than you can imagine the U.S. when you
think of those images. It’s what still exists in Mexico that has been
erased from San Antonio, unless it’s, again, tourist – the cultural
tourism that plays itself out nowadays.

MS. CORDOVA: Yes, I know you’ve confronted that a lot. Now, when your
father came back from the war, what did he do first? What kind of work did he
do?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: I think he was looking for jobs, and probably because his
father had been an auto mechanic he kind of got into working with my father,
and at some point in that time period he then started painting cars. I mean,
that was what I knew him – he’s an auto painter for many years,
but I think initially probably did a little bit of auto mechanics. Although
when I think about him being an auto mechanic I laugh, like he doesn’t
know anything about cars – [laughter] – but he does. He’s
just never been somebody that likes to fix things up in the same way, I think.
What he always said is, I’m an artist; I paint bodies or something like
that.

So, yeah, he was good at what he did and he kind of excelled also. So he would
win – he worked for Chevrolet, he worked for Volkswagen, he worked for
different companies and he’d always seem to win these little prizes while
I was growing up so he was known as a pretty good painter. And when I was a
little older, back in junior high and high school, he was able to become a subcontractor
for Mission Chevrolet and then he started hiring and he started hiring kids
from the local high school in town as interns for him, and always very frustrated
that – the work ethic probably – well, I know it continues to change
as each year comes along. But it was exciting for him to be able to hire kids
from the local high school, which was my high school, and I was at Lanier Vocational,
right, so – and we’re known as the Voks, V-O-K-S, and people say,
what’s a Vok, and it was like if you look at the image, the icon, it’s
a screw basically; it’s a little screw. [Laughs.]

And so that’s the image there, but we were vocational students, and so
that’s where you had all those types of departments and auto mechanics
and auto painting was one of them, so he had access to those students and for
many of us to pull away from that vocational track was something to be done.
And, again, each year less and less of the vocational stuff goes on, but that
was, I guess, from the 1920s to probably the 1960s or ‘70s – I guess
the ‘70s when affirmative action really starts to take – the late
‘60s when young people have more access to other venues to be educated
a little bit.

MS. CORDOVA: And so, did your mom – did your mom ever work outside the
home?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: My mom graduated from high school, which, again, from friends
– her age it seems like not too many of them graduated. And then my father
just went up to 7th grade and then joined the Army – I mean the Navy.
And then after that I think – well, during the war she went, like many
of the women, to work at Kelly Air Force Base, and she ended up working the
night shifts and just doing assembly work, and I guess she just did that for
a few years until she got married and then basically became a housewife. And
then I think that was my parents’ agreement that she would stay home and
raise the kids and he’d just make the money that was going to feed all
the children. It took them three years to have their first kid, though, and
so – first of all, she was 26 when she got married so people thought she
was going to be a hijas de Maria – you know, how students changed –
como se dice in Español? Los Santos – Vestir Los Santos, because
she was just going to be an old matron and whatever, and then she did finally
get married and then they complained because it took them three years to have
babies. And so she was 29 when she had her first child, and then they had six
children and they were like getting upset with her, like, it’s time to
stop having babies. [Laughter.]

MS. CORDOVA: So what year did your parents marry?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: In ‘49.

MS. CORDOVA: In 1949. So you must have been one of the youngest –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yes, I was born in ‘60 – I was number five
out of six; four older brothers and myself and then my sister. And I think there
was a baby that died in between there so – I always say six but there
is that seventh one that comes somewhere – I’m not sure –
between myself and my brothers.

MS. CORDOVA: That must have been a challenge with that many brothers.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: It was. I mean, I think it was always keeping up with my
brothers. I remember from being able just to walk next to them, right, so I
learned my long stride from trying to keep up with my oldest brother, and to
this day I have a long stride. [Laughs.] And then my third-oldest brother was
just not going to let a kid sister around, so he was always pushing me away,
pushing me away, and he and I just were always at each other, where I think
my older two brothers – I was that much younger so they didn’t bother
me that much. This other one was four years older than me so – you know,
he would play war with his friends and I’d want to play with them and
he’d just push me aside. So I was just watching every move that he did
and I just kept on being pushed aside.

But on the other hand, I think my dad did teach them to be loving brothers,
right, and all that sort of stuff, so they were probably not as mean and ugly
as they could have been – or, again, they didn’t have that –
they weren’t taught that. They weren’t taught to beat up on anybody.
So I guess, again, I talk about that as an experience that – when I moved
out of the house it was this major blow to what I understand of men, who are
supposed to be respecting me and loving me and thinking of me kind of as equals.
Again, it’s just that one brother that kind of challenges that, but it
has never been as ugly as I’ve seen sexism and misogyny really play itself
out as I try to speak my truth or – and I guess it was also the reason,
in relating to boys and then men, myself, you know, I have always wanted to
be respected for what I think, and – even yesterday, just thinking of
a conversation I had with one of these important men in the community and they’re
not interested in hearing what I have to say; they’re just doing regular
little chit chat, and if I put out something important they just kind of dismiss
it. And so I’m always blown away by that because that wasn’t my
experience growing up, but it allowed me at least to say, “Well, I can
be equal and I should be equal.”

Thank goodness there were four older brothers, that they did get to practice,
you know, to raise children, and there was definitely a distinction between
taking care of the girls versus taking care of the boys. And growing up we traveled
up to when I was 12, so as we went from San Antonio – you know, we started
in small little trips up to maybe Corpus and then further down, and then the
idea was to visit my grandparents and my great-grandmother that lived in –
Tampico, so that we would know her before she died. And it was all of us scrambling
to a car and all of us sleeping either in the car or small hotels or whatever
as we went into Mexico. But we would rent two rooms and the boys would stay
with my father and my mom and my sister and I – it was just always separated
that way.

So there was some – they did take care of just kind of acknowledging
that there were differences, and they never talked about anything else and there
was no – again, thinking of all the – eight of every 10 women that
I run into nowadays – in thinking of incest, you know, in their own families
and things. Wow, again, I was so lucky not to have ever run into it because
there were so many men in my life and with all my brothers they also have friends
that would come around, and there were the grandfathers. But that never happened
in my family.

So I think, again, it was people were just watching out all the time as well.
I mean, to this day my mom still talks about, you’ve just got to be there,
you’ve got to be alert, you’ve got to take care of everything that’s
going on.

MS. CORDOVA: Were your parents political at all?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: They’ve always been active in the community. They’ve
always been involved. Mainly I saw them involved in schools – in the schools,
my mom in the PTA [Parent Teacher Association], and getting my dad involved
as well, but I know that there used to be programs in the ‘60s and the
‘70s through the church my parents were involved – or my dad even,
through the church, he was somebody in the church for a little while and then
they kind of moved away from the church. But there were probably community development
projects going on in the urban renewal efforts of the ‘70s, and prior
to that there was another project, which I can’t think of, and I think
my dad probably sat on their committee and made decisions, and then got frustrated
about a lot of stuff.

I think – we were raised also to always eat together at dinnertime, you
know, so we could play around when we got home, from like 3:00 to 5:00 but then
at 5:00 you’d come home and help clean up and set up the table, and then
we all ate together. And so it was just always that. And then within those conversations
we talked about the day, right and so I would hear what they were thinking and
I would hear if my father was on this committee and my mom was in some sort
of activity, you know, what they were thinking. And that was within the community
of Chicanos, and I think that’s where at least I acknowledged that. They
were holding our own Latino community to the same standards. I could see that
all Latinos weren’t always up to par to taking care of their own communities,
but – my parents saying, well, that can’t be. You have to –
this is the trust you have to create. You have to be honest; you have to be
all of these things no matter what color you are.

And so they were – so, those are the stories, again, and those experiences
that kind of allow me to understand the complexities, I guess, so it wasn’t
just about the bad white people and the good brown people or – and I think
it was just more complex that way. And again, nobody said it and such but it
was just the storytelling that, again, nobody does anymore, and in those stories
you find out – you’re teaching. And we all got involved, so it wasn’t
just about what they were doing; it was what we were doing, and then they would
get involved, and like something happened at school and they’d say, well,
why don’t you document stuff and why don’t you try to talk to the
teacher? They wouldn’t just come in and solve the problems for us; it
was just like, here are some ideas that you might take back and try to do. And
you’d come back and say it didn’t happen or it didn’t work,
or whatever. And I think on their own they were probably going around asking
a few questions, but they were also allowing us to kind of create our own actions
if we needed to as well.

MS. CORDOVA: What kind of challenges were you finding in your schools?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, I mean, again, because my mom was a PTA mother, whatever
the situation was, from like bad food during – which nobody wanted to
eat, and just kind of being concerned because a lot of the kids were eating
free lunch, so people would complain, to just the types of classes that we could
take or not – weren’t even available and so kind of challenging
that, or teachers who – a few teachers who might not really be supportive
and we were wanting them to just be better teachers for us, were kind of things
that we responded to. And again, we just wanted more and we figured if other
schools were having access to these programs – because we would be in
exchange with some of these students – or, again, I had cousins that would
be at other schools who were like, well, why can’t we have that too? And
when the PTA mothers would seem to get together it seemed like those PTA mothers
from our side of town didn’t have any ability to change policies as parents
whereas parents from other schools seemed to be able to do that.

So I think that from junior high to high school I started seeing class differences,
right, and kind of saying, oh, well, because in that neighborhood even though
they might be a mixture of white and Latinas, those parents are lawyers and
doctors and over here what we have is working-class people who don’t even
have a high school education. I remember even between 11th and 12th grade we
were devastated because they had switched out a really, really good principal
and we really loved that principal, and he had worked really hard to offer students
trigonometry and Russian and all these – we were trying to get Tejano
history class, and he was going to help us do that.

I mean, I remember him going to classrooms: I need some kids to take Russian
because we need to have Russian. I didn’t end up taking it but he was:
we need more classes so you all have more choices. You need to take these classes,
calculus and things. So he expanded that and within the time that he was a principal,
so many kids got to go get lots of scholarships to go through college. So that’s
what we wanted and we had kind of – since 7th grade – because my
brothers went to those schools – I wanted him as the principal and he
had been our principal for a couple of years and then they switched him out
because politically he wasn’t following the superintendent’s desires
and so they kicked him out. So we protested and we held demonstrations at independent
school districts headquarters.

I think – I was helping to organize with my friends and lots of other
people and we went before the school board, and like when I read something of
course they said, some adult wrote that for you. It was like, no. [Laughs.]
But that was the way we were treated and mistreated – anyway, just disrespected
I guess, in so many ways that way, that we just kind of wanted to respond to
those things.

MS. CORDOVA: Was that your first experience protesting?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: No, I think in 7th grade – it really was about food
in 7th grade. [Laughter.] It was a really important thing. I mean, we protested
even by bringing our own food and making a bigger deal of it, and people had
food fights, and little things like that because, again, people didn’t
know how to protest. And so we did go to the principal and we did kind of ask,
you know, for better quality of food, and that really never changed much. But
I think it was in 7th grade probably when – most of that protesting started.

MS. CORDOVA: How were you learning your strategies for protesting?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: That’s a good question. I don’t think that
I actually have thought through that, but, I mean, this is the ‘70s so
– but I’ll really have to think about that because I want to –
I know that there was a lot of activism going on in San Antonio but on some
level I don’t remember it, and yet maybe – and I had, again, the
older brothers, that I’d know there was a walkout one year in the ‘70s,
so maybe I heard the stories and kind of knew about it and thought, well, we
can do that here as well. But there was nobody coming in to organize young people
at the junior-high level or when I was in high school either. But I think we
were just a few years younger than the whole – you know, the ‘60s
and ‘70s movement, I was 10 years behind everybody. But maybe it was being
able to hear it and see it on TV or something like that. So that’s a possibility.

But, yeah, I don’t remember going to protests with my parents, say, and
they actually weren’t really impressed with the Chicano movement because
– I think it was really about respect. They just saw that they were –
that the people protesting didn’t respect other people, didn’t say
it nicely, cursed, and so you’ve got to have your manners, like I think
a lot of our parents, right? And they didn’t use the word “Chicano”
and then all of their kids go off – or some of their kids go off to college
and we all become MEChA [Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan] Chicano and
all that sort of stuff, so they kind of learned from us what the words meant
and so they’ve been better about it and they probably self-identify as
Chicanos – Mexicanos themselves. But, again, it was about how you treat
each other.

So I think – I mean COPS and Metro is across the street and the community
is organized for public service, and they were organizing in the ‘70s
as well, and my parents – and so those were adults like my parents, and
they felt that they didn’t like the way that they acted out and booed
at city leaders and walked away and walked out, and so they just kept on saying,
“You don’t do those things.” I think, again, if you asked
them to understand it they probably couldn’t understand it. But it’s
those sorts of things that – I mean, I still act out more than my mom
would probably like me to.

But I remember like in high school probably being angry at that superintendent
that kicked out my principal, so I would want to boo and say – Graciela,
no – [laughs] – or I would just slouch down, and it’s like
sit up, all those sorts of things – you can’t do that and you can’t
do that. And nowadays when I see the city leaders and their board and they’re
making fun of other people – I mean, they’re being seen by masses
of people and they forget that they’re being watched, and I think, oh,
that’s why – that’s why – be alert, be respectful, and
people notice. Because yesterday the city mayor was making fun of about two
or three people that walked up, and it was all as a jest – as a joke,
and people laughed in the audience and I thought, well, I don’t know;
that person must feel, okay, he’s going to laugh and it’s going
to hurt – it’s hurting. So it’s like – I just thought
that was problematic coming from the mayor. And I’m sure he didn’t
have any mean-spiritedness out of it, or he just doesn’t understand the
consequences.

That’s too long of an answer.

MS. CORDOVA: Well, to go back to your high school, now, what did you want to
be when you grew up, in high school?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: I was very involved in everything. In growing up, again,
having four older brothers I think – they were in school before we were
in school. Because my parents were involved, you know, some teachers would give
them books, so my sister and I had all these books to play around with and to
underline and scratch up. So we played school all the time, right, and so –
and taught – and we’d always bring in all our friends to teach –
you know, to have something to do to entertain us – I guess three, four,
and five, or whatever your age, and then when we finally went to school, I really
enjoyed going to school and socializing, where my sister liked school but didn’t
like it for the social reasons that I did.

And so I just kind of took anything that was extracurricular just to be involved.
So I did band, and all my brothers had done band, so, again, music is just part
of us, but my brothers were brass players and they played trumpet and trombones
but I had to play something that was different so I wouldn’t be like them.
And my parents also talked about being different, to always be different, always
be different; don’t be like everybody else. Don’t follow the sheep,
don’t try to – if something’s wrong and everybody else is
going away from it, follow through, and people may not like you, people may
say you’re different and ugly and whatever, but that’s okay. You
have to be different because that’s going to be good for the community.
Just don’t follow the sheep. Especially my father said that.

So therefore I couldn’t – I had to play French horn so that I wouldn’t
be like my brothers. They didn’t do drama so – there was a new teacher
so we did drama, and I ran away from my friends because I didn’t want
them to follow me there so I could do something by myself, and all my friends
followed and so we did drama and we excelled there. So there were a lot of the
arts definitely involved in all of this. But any other after-school extracurricular
project, I would be doing it. I think when I probably left to college I was
thinking of being – I probably thought, what would it mean to be a city
councilperson or a leader, a politician of some sort? I could probably do better
than what they’re doing. But I didn’t necessarily – this is
probably the first time I say it out loud, but that might be something I was
thinking, and I think I was that naïve also on some level, because then
I think in college I was realizing, that’s not at all what I want to do
and I wouldn’t want to be part of the system, and kind of being able to
see systems and institutionalized – racism, sexism, homophobia and all
of that.

But I think that’s kind of – and I was going to come back –
my parents had also said, come back home, you know, people – not really
saying, Graciela, you need to come back, but kind of saying, notice how kids
are going away to school but they’re not coming back home. All your brothers’
friends are going away but not coming back home. So, again, affirmative action,
that’s really good for San Antonio but then a lot of people don’t
come back. And many haven’t come back, but – so it was really important
for them to have us come back, and so I think we’ve all come back except
one. [Laughter.]

MS. CORDOVA: That’s pretty good. What about the process of applying to
Yale? How did that come about?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, I think – the brother that I fought ended up
going to every school. He went to prep school and there was – some Chicanos
did what’s called the Wolverine – a Chicano group of people raise
money and somehow made contact with some professors that were in the East Coast
and somehow got one or two kids a year to go to a summer program like Choate
and Worchester and little private schools. And so my brother, when he was 14,
got to go and finished up there and then ended up going to Yale. And so like
we followed – when he went north, we went to pick him up – instead
of going back to Mexico to pick him up – to go on vacation, we started
going north to pick up my brother. And so when he graduated I was like, he’s
going to Yale; I’m going to Yale. It was like; I don’t want to go
to the same school he’s going to. I was very upset, because there he was,
the one that was my antithesis, or whatever.

MS. CORDOVA: What is his name?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Fernando.

MS. CORDOVA: Fernando, ok.

MS. CORDOVA: Yes, Xavier is the oldest – Xavier with an X – Bernard,
Fernando, Gustavo, myself, and my sister Leticia. So there’s that element.
Actually, growing up – in elementary school I read a lot of biographies
– really, those dumb little children’s biographies, but the bigger
ones, the better, and yet most biographies were written about boys, right, and
about men, but I always tried to look for the women and I always tried to look
for the people of color. There were only Native American and black – I
think. But looking for those stories, and the men went to those schools, right,
I think. So in my head probably was recognizing the name of the school, and
that really was what it was.

So I knew the top 10 football team schools and then these Ivy League schools.
I didn’t know anything about California at all, right, so those schools
didn’t come up. And then, like I said, that principal that was at my high
school the year before, they had just gotten their counselors to really get
kids into schools, and I was friends with some of the seniors so I was able
to see them applying for college, and the process. And there was Project STAY,
which is like a 30-plus-year-old nonprofit that helped to teach lots of the
Chicanos around here how to apply to schools and how to get some scholarships,
or not get to pay all those little $10 and $20 fees for applying. So I didn’t
have to pay any of those fees because – but I had learned from the friends
that I knew that had applied.

So basically I had a head start with my process of applying. I knew what to
do and just kind of started doing that. But nobody told me where to apply, so
I applied everywhere, like 20-30 schools, because I didn’t know, you know,
and I figured, well, okay, if I don’t get out of San Antonio I’m
going to apply to Trinity. If I go into the state of Texas – you know,
I’ve heard of UT Austin, I’ve heard of – I don’t remember
but I applied to Southwest Texas State, three or four in Texas and then I went
national and all the Ivy League schools, probably a couple – I probably
didn’t even know about the women’s schools either because, again,
in hindsight maybe I would have gone to a women’s school, and I didn’t
know about sizes – small, medium, and large – and I think I was
really just lucky because, I mean, the size that I got – I might have
been a little overwhelmed with Austin.

And UTSA had just opened up and I remember being taken there and hating how
ugly it looked. The architecture is real cold and sterile, and so I’m
thinking, why would I want to come here? But that was like the only time I’d
traveled to see anything. We weren’t given money to go anywhere else.
But because I guess I did get to travel to the East Coast my parents were also
comfortable with that area. My mom had heard stories about California being
– from my dad, so California was not where they were going to send me
off to. But, again, I didn’t even – I wouldn’t have been able
to say Berkeley or Stanford or anything like that. So that’s kind of how
–

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Again, I’m not sure about, again, Yale versus whatever,
but I ended up having second interview because they had interviews and the first
interview I went to school not knowing there was going to be an interview, and
I was wearing corduroy pants and whatever, and some other friend of mine had
applied also and got an interview, and the guy was like, “Well, how come
you didn’t dress up like her?” I said, “What do you mean,
how come I didn’t dress up like her?” I was, like, dressed fine,
and besides, it doesn’t matter how you’re dressed. And so I kind
of challenged that whole notion of how one looks and whatever. And he was really,
really upset and I thought my interview was going to be based on looks and all.
And of course, I just cried and told my mom, and somehow she knew somebody who
had gone to Yale, and it turns out to be Henry Cisneros’s cousin Mungia.
She was a teacher at one of the high schools in Burbank. So my mom just made
her a little call and all of a sudden I got a call from Mungia and said, “Well,
you don’t really need a second interview; you got a really good interview
and it was just fine.” She said, “But if you want one, I’ll
get you another one.”

And it was through her that – just the moment of friendship, and she
took me out to eat a little cheesecake and whatever, and I remember when I became
a recruiter for kids to go to school, I kind of took that process, like, oh,
this is friendly versus the white man who – the lawyer who put me in a
bank and interviewed me there and he – for Princeton, or the one from
Harvard. So maybe it was because Yale also had Chicanos that were really working
actively versus the other Ivy League schools that didn’t have it, so I
guess it just was a friendlier space and that’s how I ended up there.

MS. CORDOVA: Had you ever felt trapped in the San Antonio school system? I
mean, it’s interesting to hear you didn’t have any college counseling
at all, it sounds like.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah. Well, again, there was tracking and there wasn’t
tracking. So I remember in elementary there was A, B, and C, an I was in the
A group until fifth grade and then I had a teacher who couldn’t keep any
sort of discipline, so my mom could hear from a block away that – my classroom,
because it was the classroom that faced that street, so a block away my mom
could hear it. And I would probably come in complaining, and she’d say,
“We’re going to move you.” So, again, these are the places
that she would – and I got moved down to a B, right, and I was –
so then it’s like, oh, I felt bad because – so I knew that there
was something about tracking. And then by – and I think it followed a
little bit in junior high but in junior high it kind of – I felt more
mixed and so I saw, again, different schools coming together and kind of feeling,
well, these people are keeping me behind, because my elementary was small compared
to a couple of other feeder elementaries into the junior high, and so I think
– I would say to you that my best education – public school education
came from 1st through 6th grade.

And then after that I was basically repeating and bored a lot. And so in high
school when I finally – there was, yeah, you could take English for those
that were going on to college, and I remember again being bored because –
reading some Shakespearian thing and people are going, well, me, oh, oh –
you know, and in 10th grade learning stuff I had learned in 5th and 6th grade.
So I was really upset by that. So, again, it’s like, okay, can I leave
class and let me go and do something else and just kind of learn that way. And
so, you know, again, I was going to go on to college, I guess. I knew that my
parents were going to not keep their daughters – which, again, most of
the other young Chicanitas, that was the problem is they wouldn’t let
their daughters grow up, but in that case my parents didn’t have that
problem.

But, yeah, it was really – the first semester of Yale was – it
was the first time I got B and a C, you know. I got C’s. I had never gotten
C’s. I had gotten probably a B and been traumatized by those B’s
in high school for band because I thought I deserved the A also, and I didn’t
know what it meant to have one class and eight books for that and four 20-page
papers, or whatever, and you multiply that by four classes. And I didn’t
understand what it meant to work and also have all this free time. And so the
first semester I was working more hours than I should have probably worked,
and I was the only one in my group of friends that had to do any work-study
and had loans. Everybody else seemed to have the time and all of them seemed
to do really well really quickly, but, again, until I learned about their experiences,
for them, that’s all they had been doing for all their lives, so it was
easy for them. They were probably repeating in the way I was repeating 5th grade
stuff in 10th grade; they were probably repeating stuff they had learned in
high school as well because they’d got to go to really good schools.

I mean, they didn’t have remedial classes or anything like that, but
I just had to learn. So by the second semester I kind of said, okay, I can only
work so many hours, and I was the first one in the library and I would park
myself there and just study for a few hours and then leave my books, so I knew
I would have a place to come back to, which is not – being hoggy I guess,
but I kind of learned those sorts of things. Otherwise you don’t have
a place to study.

And then by second semester I was getting A’s and B’s so I had
stopped moving into the C. And then by the final year I was getting C’s
again, but then it was a political decision. What I was writing was the concern,
right, so I was going to get a lower grade because my political viewpoints weren’t
what the professor liked, and I knew that and that was okay. So there was definitely
a growth for me from not caring, also, about what the grades were going to be
like at all.

MS. CORDOVA: How did that happen? How did that shift?

MS. SÁNCHEZ. I think, I mean, what was wonderful was having those eight
books to read, right. And probably whoever those professors were – maybe
they were liberal ones that said, okay, “I’m going to give you a
whole lot of Marxist stuff, but I’ll give you a conservative one and you
decide what you like.” And so, one of them, I guess when I was a junior,
I remember being – during mid-term or spring break – I would just
stay at school, right, so I had more time to keep up and catch up with the reading.
And so reading like Schooling in Capitalist America [Schooling in capitalist
America: educational reform and the contradictions of economic life by
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis. New York: Basic Books, 1976] – so, okay,
I underlined almost every word – [laughs] – or something like that.
I was like, oh, I enjoy what I’m reading.

All of this is making sense and kind of following that. Just finding those
books – I was taking labor history classes and saying, oh, this is what’s
happening because I wanted to take Chicano history, but there was only one Chicano
history class, right, and I wanted to take other things. And so it was in those
places that I guess I got to have a better critique of the world and that’s
how I understood it.

And again, I can’t remember any professor that just really guided me.
It was just – they were mainly quite professors that were there too, but
they may all have been somewhat liberal in that – they weren’t somebody
I wanted to be attached to and so I kind of left without having that guidance.
When they come back here and now see all these Chicano professors working really
hard with Chicano young students and saying you’ve got to continue with
the track of going on to college and being a professor. You have to do this,
you need to be there, you need to go on to graduate school – all this
guidance, just like, that wasn’t there.

To have an Antonio Castaneda – [inaudible] – was like, wow. [Laughter.]
There’s so many more, but, yeah, there was the one. Juan Bruce-Novoa,
who is actually Colombiano, but he was there, and –

MS. CORDOVA: Did you take a class with him?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Actually, no because he was there when I was a freshman,
so he was teaching upper-level courses. But I remember going to some lectures
and he was involved with helping the Chicano students any way. So, I always
engaged my older brother, who ended up taking a year – he and I were there
when he was a senior and I was freshman because he took a year off. So, through
him, I kind of saw – it was when I was in college there, all off the sudden,
we became friends.

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: And I think, political stuff, too, I think. So, he got
to know him and I didn’t get to know him, and he took two years off, and
came back, and whatever. And only some deans, the Chicano dean, who wasn’t
a teacher – those were the people who were the only Chicanos at the school
besides the students and there were a hundred students, I think. Well, 30 students
for every incoming class.

MS. CORDOVA: The East Coast must have been a bit of a culture shock for you.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: I loved it, right, because I also went to movies all the
time when I was a little kid. My sister and I would take the bus. I mean, again,
this was where a teacher tells you, like, here are all these films, maybe you
can check them out. We don’t have access to anything but the bus, so my
parents gave me – We would catch a bus at 5:00, do the double feature
up on San Pedro, which is the [Omnis?] theater that doesn’t exist any
more, and we would see foreign films, or old ‘40s and ‘50s movies.
And so we were there for four hours and my dad would pick us up.

So I think the exposure to other places was just something I wanted, and so
when I was there, sure it was a culture shock, but I liked the pace, I liked
the – I liked the diversity in people. I mean walk out in New Haven and
some guy comes up to me, ¿Tu hablas Español? And I say, sure.
And then he talks like Puerto Rican and so it’s like oh no. [Laughter.]
I don’t understand what you’re saying. Slow down, slow down, slow
down. And then to be able to differentiate that and New Haven wasn’t necessarily
pretty as New Haven until you get into the campus and then – it’s
all – that’s pretty.

And did do so some – I was thinking of coming back to San Antonio to
teach. So, when I started taking those Schooling in Capitalist America, or whatever,
I was like, well, maybe I should just kind of take extra classes, so I can teach
when I come back to San Antonio before I become a lawyer. I think by that time
I was thinking of maybe doing that. So then I was teaching within in my senior
semester, the first or – the first semester I teaching in the schools
– one of the schools. In New Haven so it kind of got to be more integrated
into the community. And I walked to work and walked back and so it was a lot
of poverty and a lot of East Coast, urban, ugly. [Laughs.] What is it at its
worst and that compared to what I was living in and known.

MS. CORDOVA: And so you were at Yale in the early ‘80s, is that right?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: ‘78 TO ‘82.

MS. CORDOVA: And you joined MEChA there, right?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: After like, during the second semester. Probably more the
second year, yeah, again, rejection at first because of what I had been raised
– think Chicanos are bad and all that sort of stuff and then – and
hanging out with more of my white – well, the people in the dormitories.
It wasn’t by floor, it was by entryway, so across the entryway was a Chicana
from El Paso, across the way was another Chicana from somewhere else. Downstairs
was another Chicana. And they had their roommates and there was diversity.

There was the woman whose daddy and mom worked in the – for some embassy,
whatever, so was exposed to people of color, and so she was very – good
people. They were more sympathetic and understanding of difference, and so kind
of, the African, Afro-Jewish woman, and so it was kind of fun with those sorts
of people. And then, after getting to know some – getting involved with
MEChA and – a little bit of the time – and they were doing theater
there. And one of my, again, entryway friends was – was she from El Paso?
So she said, let’s do some – all the guys were doing theater, let’s
do our own stuff. And we did something like “Macho MEChA Men” from
“Macho Macho Men.” [Laughter.] So all of us did drag and we did
Luis – whatever his name is – Lois Valdez’s – what’s
the other one that he does all the time that everybody does? I can’t think
of it?

MS. CORDOVA: “The Vendidos?”

MS. SÁNCHEZ: “Los Vendidos” – and kind of playing
off. And then someone like Juan Bruce-Novoa seeing that and saying, ya’ll
are so passé, don’t be doing stuff that was done in the ‘70s
or whatever. Kind of, not – feeling hurt because it’s like, I never
even have been exposed to it and somebody kind of showed it. And again, we still
played with gender and all those sorts of things, and – but I understand,
like, okay, I see where he was coming from, but his critique could have been
little – [laughs] – nicer.

So, kind of did that with friends like that, and by junior year I lived off
campus and ended up rooming with a Chicana from Tucson and so, again, I got
much more integrated in all of that – I mean but still kept my white friends
too, but less and less each year.

MS. CORDOVA: Was MEChA like one of the primary organizations you were involved
with or were there others that you were –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Principally MEChA – again, I did Children’s
Theater also because of some of my white friends who had seen that a lot of
you were doing theatre – and I had done theater in high school and junior
high school, but it was kind of nerve racking because again, that’s working
with the white kids. I mean Yale has a lot of good theater – not just
the graduate school, but it was at the undergraduate level, everybody just did
it just it as volunteers so it was just a lot to see. There were 12 plays that
popped up every you know, week and different people doing it – they were
all student run, amazing kids, right – [laughs] – and so it was
the place that really –

I mean I’m not one that – I would always memorize but I was always
memorizing at the last moment so I was like, mm can’t do this here. So
I did some of that with them but I kind of pulled away in that – in a
way that I felt comfortable and I guess I wanted to see, you know – feeling
safer with Chicanas, to be able to do that a little bit more. But you know I
think that years later they did this thing with Chicana theater group, but not
while I was there – just those are the moments that we spent entertaining
ourselves and really – and the community. And it was Chicanas and Boriquas
right, kind of working with the African-American and the Asian communities.
So there was definitely a lot of that junior and senior year and trying to push
to get a MEChA house and we ended up doing MEChA and Asians, kind of dividing
up a building and so –

MS. CORDOVA: So it much more, sort of third world kind of grouping of what,
Chicanos and all the Puerto Ricans along with Asians.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And not the international types actually,
like so although I get – and this was the late 70’s, 80’s
so we’re in a lot of exposure to all the struggles in Central America
– started coming some friends that I happened to get to know from the
international level, who were really active in trying to stop wars in Central
America and there was all that you know, South African and Apartheid –
so there were demonstrations that were happening. And you know you walked to
classes and there it was. So you were just exposed to all of that and people
that came and spoke were always, you know, radicals – and again this is
funny, I think of where I met [Gloria] Anzaldúa was up at Yale and that
had just published This Bridge Called My Back [This bridge called
my back: writings by radical women of color, editors, Cherríe Moraga,
Gloria Anzaldúa; Watertown, Mass.: Persephone Press, 1981], so you know,
I have first edition, 1982, you know, while they were there.

But in also being kind of caught up and trying to write something about Anzaldúa
and you know, people were – the Chicano, the people of color – saying
Eldredge Cleaver is in town, and he’s going to speak so you all have to
go, right? And it’s like who? Who’s he, right? And then the white
women were saying, oh there’s this book called This Bridge Called
My Back, so it was white women saying the book. So I did both and I checked
out Eldredge Cleaver and felt really bad that I hadn’t gone to the other
one, and that next day Anzaldúa was having a small session, whichever
Chicano showed up, and there were six or seven of us and so it was just like
breakfast and lunch with her, just we hung out with her.

But, you know, again, always being divided is like am I a person of color,
man, woman – and I hadn’t identified as a lesbian then, but I was
really – that Chicana from Tucson ended up being a lesbian. She had to
take her time coming out to me and all that sort of stuff but you know, and
so I don’t know that I even knew Anzaldúa was a lesbian per se,
but that was just my moment with me, not that they’re because of the –
I mean, again, those schools bring in a lot of big names, right. So we would
go, so I don’t know, that’s what I guess in hindsight think, well
those are good things, and those are the places that I kind of remember even
to this day.

I can think of all the bad places of being attacked – I mean I would
probably have killed myself with all the depression and you know, that happens
and the abuse – that can happen to the work that we do here so we try
to think of the good things. So that’s not – it’s a good thing,
it’s a bad thing.

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughter.] So was This Bridge Called My Back immediately
influential on you or was it sort of a timed process, over time.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, I think I probably read it right – I mean
I was basically going to graduate that – I mean it was probably March,
April – the spring of ‘82 when they came through, and so I probably
picked it up afterwards and read it and read bits and pieces of it. I think
it was pretty immediate, I mean because I always say that that’s the theory
that ends the basis of the Esperanza. And again, it’s many women of color
kind of putting their voices there, but – with Anzaldúa and –
kind of having their ideas in – I remember certain grants you need to
be able to quote any of these women saying there’s no higher gear of oppression
and bah bah bah bah bam. And so because, again, I can identify that and say
well this is how it has to work here at the Esperanza because what we’re
dealing with – I mean deal with the men urbanizing is that it is about
race and class and not the rest of the stuff like – what the white people
are – same sort of thing – [laughs]. And I think Anzaldúa,
especially her more recent stuff, you know, working with white people and working
with men, and you know again, this was the Esperanza just because we –
I mean I think of it as both exposures of our reality but was existing here
and what we want it to create plus – that’s another thing writings
also said.

And it was Audre Lorde, and we were trying to bring Audrey Lure and then she
died and so – but again, because we knew their writings and I knew them
and I mean to this day, again, there are young women that come in and they’ve
never read any of their stuff, and it’s like, here’s a book, you
know – here’s your present you know, read it now. And I don’t
know that they’re necessarily reading it, I would like to actually have
time to say, okay let’s do this and let’s do that. Some of the staff,
you know, especially some of the younger staff never would know these book at
all, especially if they were educated in Texas. So they went their way to California,
somewhere open, and it’s supposed to be – [inaudible] – but
if they stay in Texas, another loss. So you know, it’s been fun to have
16 and 17 and 18-year-old girls come back you know 10 years later saying, thank
you for giving me these books, thank you for introducing me to these names.
Like when I went to this college I was able to not get lost, just go right to
the place of the people who I would be teaching the vision anyway.

MS. CORDOVA: And so when you graduated from Yale in what field?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Is it combining with sociology and history? And I think
it was, again, it was for the classes, one that I was taking. You know, walking
into a political science class, it’s bullshit and walk out of there, you
know. This is what you could do, you could go for a week or so many days or
two weeks and check out classes, right, and of course you’d be falling
behind if you didn’t focus and take classes to classes continue, right,
but at least you – got exposed at first I found myself jumping in and
out of classes until I found people that I liked. And so that’s –
and then it ended up being there, so no to political science, couldn’t
get into economics whatsoever, you know, but the sociology classes kept on popping
up and these history classes kept on popping up, and women’s study was
brand new so there really wasn’t much there, you know taking class in
film. These little things like that that – wanted to take the one about
more ethnic studies on [inaudible] or whatever that was being done by some guy
named Tom – or whatever. They always had groups from New York, you know,
playing Salsa – so I’d go to the dance but I never took the class
because I thought I’m not supposed to take that – that’s the
easy class. [Laughs].

But that’s what people were saying about sociology, those were easy classes,
you don’t come to Yale to take sociology and so I kind of had to hide
that also because that was a piece of guess you weren’t finding the classes
that I’m interested in. And this is explaining my life to me in a better
way and nobody damned history, but definitely sociologists are kind of problematic
– nobody was going to – shouldn’t have also done the teacher
certification, but there was a group of them and so within that group it was
okay. But still people – again, you’re going to either be a doctor
or a lawyer if you went to Yale, and so those were good choices. A politician
would be with a lawyer and it’s just a known fact, yeah. So I really had
to hide everything else – [laughs].

MS. CORDOVA: All right, let me – this is a good point to stop this tape
and put in another, so we’ll take a break here. All right, we are recording,
this is Cary Cordova for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Today is June 25th, 2004 and this is session one, disc two with Graciela Sánchez.
And so I guess my first question to you on this disc would be, did you come
back to San Antonio immediately after Yale, or what happened? I mean I know
your parents have already sort of been very clear that they wanted you to come
home. Was that a tough decision at all?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: No, I wanted to come home, I had had that experience and
I thought – I was coming back to teach. And I had learned all this stuff
and I wanted to work with my community and so I applied to teach and didn’t
get hired – [laughs] – and I went to my high school and said, “You
need to hire me because I came through this school and I went to this school
and you should want to hire me.” I didn’t say that, but in my head
I probably was thinking that it would be that easy to get in and I applied in
two different school districts. San Antonio has like 13 school districts or
more.

I finally get accepted to teach but it was after I took on another job and
that was work at Southwest Voter Registration Project because it was getting
closer to September and I didn’t have a job, so probably at one of these
Chicano, East Coast, school reunion, somebody said, “Oh, there’s
Southwest looking for somebody as a paralegal.” Again, by that time I
was really thinking about teaching so it was like well, maybe that’s something,
I don’t know what that is. So I really –to you – [laughter]
– and –

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughter.] So I mean you didn’t very much about the project,
the – before you joined it.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Actually it’s interesting, in my junior year I actually
took – I got accepted to the LBJ School for Public Policy, or whatever
that they had you know, kids of color getting accepted to these programs so
then they could maybe go on to graduate school and public policy. And four Chicanas
– two from Princeton, one from Harvard and myself – got in and then
maybe a couple of Chicano guys from the East Coast, but everybody else was Texas-based
Chicanos going for this program. And so we all kind of hung together, and found
– politically, again, found ourselves being more radical than anybody
going to school from the undergraduate level in Texas.

And so we formed friendships around the schools, which is kind of – I
mean we made friends with these other women, but these other Chicano women were
looking for their husband-type sort of discussions and they, you know, young
Chicanos that were coming with us from the East Coast were interested in those
young Chicano women – [laughs] – all those horrors, right?

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs].

And I don’t know if you know, but Luz Calvo, she’s now in Ohio
and she said – I’m not even sure what department – but she
started at UCLA in political science as a graduate student and then dropped
out and maybe went to the school of History of Consciousness Program at Santa
Cruz and now – [inaudible] – in Ohio. She was one of those friends
who I’ve continued to be friends with – the other two became attorneys
and became further centrists, and not politically. And Luz and I became friends,
and we both also came out to each other, but while we were there as juniors
going into senior years, they were all very straight.

[Cross talk].

MS. CORDOVA: Actually you were just telling me how you and Luz had just come
out to each other and this was –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, actually when we were in the program, everybody was
real heterosexual and I had just had my first year living with a lesbian and
got to be –

MS. CORDOVA: At Yale?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: At Yale.

MS. CORDOVA: Okay.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: My roommate was a lesbian and she had her friends, right.
So I wasn’t that big, and I still hadn’t identified and that was
okay – I mean if what I did with my four years – you got to study.
I mean you’re going to really mess up if you get involved with anything
or anybody or whatever, right, and even the – [inaudible] – can
only be MEChA because of the skills that I had to build up and I just need what
I had versus what everybody else had. And so, all of us are good kids and good
smart kids but some would be more experienced to know how write as well as they
did – whatever – it was too many 20-page papers and 30-page papers.

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs].

MS. SÁNCHEZ: So that was my focus, not really dealing with my sexuality,
but at least in my junior year, being exposed to my roommate and her friends
and you know just – I mean I had been raised to be about justice so there
was no way I was going to feel awkward or you know – well, awkward I was
feeling – but being able to discriminate, because I was exposed into going
to you know, a magazine – a woman’s magazine, but then all around
me were lesbians. It was like wow I haven’t been around a whole bunch
of lesbians. And kind of feeling a little awkward about it and those sorts of
moments and not knowing, again, who to talk to because I wasn’t going
to say anything that was going to hurt my roommate.

But so that exposure at least made me feel a little more comfortable and by
my senior year, the first national like gay/lesbian days at the university’s
Glad Days as I guess they would call happened, and that was 1982. And I know
at that time I was the president of MEChA, you know, had to challenge the homophobia
coming from the younger undergraduate students from freshmen and sophomores
– you know again, not identifying as a lesbian but walking around with
a pink triangle and saying, you know, we have to support other people that are
different and end up being, you know, same oppressions. So kind of making those
connections. And so at least I had those experiences, then coming to Texas and
kind of seeing the super heterosexuality of the U.S. – supposed to get
married and the dorms, the men, could go on to the women’s side after
you live in a – [inaudible] – that women couldn’t go to the
men’s side after 11 o’clock and would be penalized and pushed down
and kicked out. You know, we were called communist – [laughs] –
they just – my lower scores of any time was at the LBJ school because
again, it just became a – that’s where I guess I realized the politics
– [inaudible] – did here and never ever followed up with whatever
grades. I don’t even know if they passing or whatever, but so that again,
allowed us to be strong friends amongst the poor Chicanos.

MS. CORDOVA: And that was between your junior –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: ‘80, yeah,

MS. CORDOVA: And senior year in the summer.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the summer. And so, I don’t
know where the – how I got into that. But, oh – so then I did come
home – I guess you were asking about that – and during that summer
program, though, one of the Chicanas, Juanita [Hernandez] and others who were
at Harvard got new – Rillian was maybe doing her senior thesis on voting
rights because she was from Crystal City, so for her it was a strong connection,
so she was a strong Chicana from Crystal City and –

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: And so she came to interview him and she brought me along,
and so we got to meet him, and that’s kind of how I met him, and so I
knew of Southwest voter registration project, but I wasn’t interested
in voter registration education. When I took the job, it was just like, it’s
a job, I’ll do it, and after like two or three months, I didn’t
want to be there any more, and my mom said, “You gave them two years,
that’s your commitment, you have to be there for two years,” and
so I kind of went ahead and stayed on.

And again, all of those – and again, in hindsight, say, okay, but at
least it was the experience, so I understand what it was to work in a non-profit
from that point on. I understood the inequities within a Chicano, non-profit
organization that’s about speaking about justice, not actually being interested
in a lot of the issues that I thought were of interest because, again, I was
doing work around women’s issues and Central America activism, and wanted
to see why we weren’t asking – it was about polling the community
about issues and how do women think? How do Latino women think? And their response
was Latina women think how their husbands think, and I was like, no. [Laughs.]
And what do you they think about Central America? And it’s like –
it’s an international issue is not a domestic issues. But it’s like,
yeah, but our domestic moneys are – so I knew all those things and kind
of was frustrated and had no entry to talk to William [Willie Velasquez] or
to any of the men who were the people with power.

All the women – I was the person – as a paralegal, I had more power
than any of the other women because they were all secretaries or research assistants
who didn’t go to an Ivy League school. And so I didn’t – I
was given that respect of kind of being above them for that reason even though
they had a history of being in that institution and were smart and good research
assistants. But they all got paid less and they had very little insurance or
they didn’t – I mean like one of the secretaries had a baby and
they had no insurance for her that covered maternity leave and all that sort
of stuff.

And so David – David Montejano, who worked their for a couple of years
or a year – that’s how I met him – had his partner at that
time, Margarita, have a baby and so he did insurance to cover so then all of
the sudden they were able to cover them, right? So I saw – I was like,
this is really messed up, right. And I was getting paid $16,000 as a first year
in 1982, which was, again, more money than my father had ever made. But that
was more than any of the secretaries were making and yet much less than the
40, 50 thousand dollars that the men were making as director of litigation,
and policy, and Willie’s own position.

And you know, all the women had no names; they were all called ladies. Hey
lady, hey lady, hey lady from Willie’s point of view and I – like,
my office was right across his, but it was always closed. It wasn’t an
office that I could just walk into. And so I didn’t like that and I didn’t
– and MALDEF [Mexican American Legal Defense] was just a little bit further
down and always wanting to see how MALDEF could get more involved in the local
issues, or the regional issues that were affecting us.

And again, I understand non-profits a lot better, and so they have to pick
and choose what issues – but their issues were education and voting rights
for the most part and we were like, but there are all these other issues that
we wanted to be involved in, and their excuse was always, well, California –
which is the where the office headquarters are – doesn’t want to
get involved. And so they just never got involved. Years later, I saw a new
director there and he didn’t – he did what California said, but
he also got involved locally, and I was like, wow, finally.

So they were just making it up – they didn’t want to get involved
in their own ways. I mean, like, around immigration – if we want to get
them involved it’s hard for us to still just call them in because they
can price beat the issues, but they’re not integrated in organizing at
all on the local – or even as it affects on a national level because that’s
just not the policy that they have taken or, again, the local council not to
be involved.

And working as a paralegal, what I was doing was on redistricting. And so it
was kind of funny because I guess computers were real brand new, message machines
were brand new. Nobody had computers except for the secretary, right, and they
were just learning how to use them. So I mean all the calculations really to
figure out districts were all by hand and – oh and that junior year, also
– going to senior year – that summer – I also worked for the
city planning department because somebody got me a job – I don’t
know – because maybe because of the policy institute. And it was interesting
because I was helping them in planning to do division of the city by the district,
right. And I remember being used by the white city planning department when
they took me to meet with MALDEF and Southwest Voter Registration Project to
talk about the plan that the city was integrate – was interested in bringing
up and running to someone named Judith Sanders-Castro, and saying they’re
using you. And I said, oh, well that’s – I’m just an intern.
I have no idea that I’m being used.

And then again, seven months later I’m working on the other side –
not with the city. But that was just an internship and so I did a lot of calculating
of that – addition, subtraction, division – and color-coding maps
and being frustrated because I was bored. It was like, this is what college
got me was – I had learned this in up to third grade or something like.
I didn’t need a – and I see this with young people, too, because
some of the work here, is like, yeah, we have to sweep, we have to mop, we have
to do these things, but hopefully finding them projects that really get them
excited, whereas over there was it was the same thing, but it had to be done.
And I guess nobody sat with me to explain the bigger context of the work, right.
It was just like, here’s what you need to do and just do it. And again,
I had to learn the larger context at some point.

Again, I wasn’t supportive of the politics because Willie also talked
about the power – coming from the top, and that the leadership –
we had to educate the leadership. So if we’re going to get them elected,
let’s select people that are going to be elected and then let’s
educate them what the issues are, and then they will tell their community, and
it will go back down the other way. So if you want to – okay, let’s
get involved in Central America; okay, let’s teach them what’s going
on in Central America, and it will set that right versus – most organizers
go bottom up, right.

MS. CORDOVA: How were you learning what was happening in Central America? Like
what were your sources?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, again, I learned, initially, the stuff in the East
coast, and when I came here, I searched out for similar sort of program or any
organization doing that, and there was group called Latin America Assistance.
And it was a whole bunch of white activists – older than me, but they
doing some of that work. I know that during the ‘82, ‘83, ‘84,
there was the socialist workers party, and other folks like that were around,
and they were going to these events or they would always pass out their little
newspapers and then try to recruit.

So I remember some platíca [workshop/talk] somewhere, so I went to that
and of course they were trying to hone in on me, and I just didn’t feel
like I needed to be on anybody’s party. It’s like, I didn’t
know them enough and I felt just too much pressure. But I would go to these
talks, or workshops, or film screenings or whatever was around in San Antonio
at that time, and that’s how I just kind found out what was going on,
but feeling that there wasn’t a lot going on also. That it was limited
again to a lot male-centered stuff or nothing on women, and the Chicanos were
very mainstream and very domestic focused. And they had been doing it. I mean
if think MALDEF and Southwest they all lived in Southwest, they think they had
– [inaudible] – differently since ‘68, so it was a little
less than 20 years, but – I guess Southwest was probably 10 years old
at that time, so for me they seemed old. They just seemed really – so
even though I probably thought they were that much older, they were just kind
of – that was the energy the interest they were focusing on.

And at some point I ran into Chicana women doing organizing around Central
America and another Chicana that helped set up – well all these Chicanas
ended up helping to set up the Esperanza at some point. And were finding each
other, but it was like year ‘83 and ‘84. It was like, God, it took
us that many years to meet each other and we were in the same town. That shouldn’t
be happening. There should be some place that we can all can know to come that
makes it just that much quicker. [Laughs.] And that we were real frustrated
with the sexism that we were seeing within our own Chicano community, and outside
of that, but especially with that because we were working with these guys. And
again, just their lack of global vision and so we just talked to each other.

And then I kept on saying, why don’t we do it, why don’t we do
it? We can do it; they did, they did, and they who just did in the ‘60s
and the ‘70s. And again, not really knowing the history about like how
in ‘60s and the ‘70s, there was more money from D.C. that was coming
through and they were looking for these sorts of projects to be able to underwrite
and to support, and that’s how a lot of these groups got started where
we were in the midst of the Reagan years – [laughs] – and yet it
was so bad that we were present and we were organizing off the street, but it
was like we were still so isolated, and it’s still a big, spread out city.
So we just moved around and had everything in the backs of our cars, and what
else?

And then, I did get involved in my first relationship when I came back.

MS. CORDOVA: While you were with the Southwest Voters?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah, yeah. And I guess from – for about a year,
I lived with my parents and that – and all my high school friends –
my closest high school friends – we all became – we all came out
to each other. So we didn’t know that when we were in high school and
when we were away, they kept – they started going to the gay bars, but
they didn’t tell me. And then when I came back home, they all little by
little came out, and one of our friends went to Michigan, and she came back
and she was a lesbian, too. [Laughs.] And there was a – so all the women
became lesbians and we had one gay friend, male friend. He was doing drag –
[laughs] – and all that sort of stuff.

And it was like, why did you keep all this from – but I think again,
in hindsight, we figured out and said, well we hung with each other because
we could seek these things. We talked about having crushes on that teacher and
that was a woman teacher, and though we didn’t trash each other or make
fun each other, we just thought that was cool and you’re going to give
her flowers, that’s cool. [Laughs.] And you open up your locker you have
all these women in images of Hollywood inside. I was like, that’s cool
– we didn’t know, right, and in the – what was it –
when I graduated, Anita Bryant in ‘78 and high school was a big anti-gay
person and I remember standing in band formation and having to fight one of
my Chicana Baptist friends who just was totally anti-gay, and just – again,
just that sense of justice and what was right and what was wrong. I just could
be firm about it without having any identify towards being gay just knowing
that was wrong to just be attacking gay people.

So that was what I knew – and San Antonio is just closeted anyway that
everybody comes out in their own way but just hides it from everybody else,
but at some point, when I came back, then I found out that they were all going
to bars, and I said, well, let me go. So then I just kind of went with my friends
and it was – and mom was like, well, why are you going out? Where are
you going? [Laughter.] And then I got involved with this woman, and then it
was an abusive relationship, so that wasn’t any good.

MS. CORDOVA: And that was about 1982, ‘83, or somewhere in there.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: ‘83 to like early – till ‘85 –
sometime in ‘85.

MS. CORDOVA: Well, that’s a long time to be in that relationship.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: It was a year-and-a-half. And that for me – it was
like a year-in-a-half – that was really horrible. And when I think –
and the only thing that – at that point, it was just the worst thing because
I had wasted such a long time in a relationship and – I mean the time
that – I lived with her probably a year and I lived with her because of
the pressures of you need to come live with me.

I hadn’t been involved in any relationship. So again, I didn’t
know boundaries and I hadn’t had those experiences, so it was kind of
the worst sort of situation – [laughs] – to be in your first relations,
and be abusive, and not know – like where I would have said to a man,
you don’t abuse me, you don’t hit me, you don’t scream at
me, and all that stuff – I knew that I could say that to a man, but it’s
like, well, here’s a woman. She’s telling me her story, and her
story was that she was abused, and she was hurt, and so I feel empathy, sympathy,
or whatever, and want to take care, which is again that whole we’ve been
raised to take of.

So that is what I found myself ending up doing and then when I tried to talk
to people about the abusive relationship, nobody wanted to listen. I mean I
didn’t tell my parents, I didn’t tell my sister – my sister
was in college. So maybe if she had been home I would have been able to talk
to her. But when I told some of my high school friends who were queer, they
didn’t want to hear it. So it was – so I was a little confused about,
like, where to go, what to do.

MS. CORDOVA: Why didn’t they want to hear it – your friends?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, because I found out that the one when I did tell
very directly was also in an abusive relationship. And so I think there’s
just a lot of abuse going on – straight and gay. So maybe that was part
of it.

MS. CORDOVA: So what was – that must have been a huge moment for you
or a very important time to finally come out and admit – or were you admitting
that you were a lesbian, or was this sort of an experiment, or how were you
dealing with this experience?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, when I came out, I finally came out and I placed
all the blame on my being gay to the theory I was reading. So I had just read
– [laughter] – Compulsory Heterosexuality [London: Onlywomen
Press, 1981] by what’s her name – a real famous, white feminist.
I can’t think of her name. Adrienne Rich.

MS. CORDOVA: Oh, right, okay.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: And it was within a book called Compulsory Heterosexuality
and – [inaudible] – fantastic – [inaudible] – because
– [inaudible] – what it was that I was reading. And I think it was
in the book – I think I bought it in one of the bookstores. Again, I came
back and I wanted the same – it was just really active in college and
just what – everything I had there and over here it was like there was
so much missing. And so I went to those – I was getting paid, so I actually
didn’t have to go to a library, I could actually buy books and that’s
the place, that moment, I probably bought more books than ever in my life.

And then when I stopped working and I just hated going to bookstores because
I couldn’t buy a book anymore, but at that point – so I just thought,
I didn’t know – just felt like, let me read it and I was able to
read that it was like, it justified. It was like well, of course, if men are
this way and it’s just horrible world with the men, and I’ve never
really gotten along with these men because of these same situations –
they don’t listen to me when I speak, they kind of do this, and this,
and this – And then later on well, maybe I did have a crush on –
I think I was doing that in college, too – my junior, senior year –
kind of really questioning that. But then here it was just kind like more politically
I can totally acknowledge that this is the place that I should go, and okay,
then, it’s all right – so kind of going there in that direction.

So that was my rationalizing, but then it was okay because all my friends
were gay also, but again, we didn’t talk. It was just about going out
and dancing. [Laughs.]

[End of tape one.]

And I – my girlfriend kind of said, you know, you need to move out of
the house, and you should tell your mom you’re going out, you’re
leaving. And so in a very bad way, you know, it’s like I ended up coming
out to my mom because, you know, my friend at that time was driving me, and
my mom was sitting up front with my friend at that time and I was in the back
and we were having this conversation that was really a hard conversation. And
my mom starts crying and then I come out to her and she’s not wanting
to hear it. And it was really ugly. And I think, again, I wasn’t having
– I don’t think I had any problems telling her, but maybe the way
I was, you know, pushed to do that that didn’t work well. And so my mom
just said, “Don’t tell your father; that would be the worst thing.
Just promise me that.” So I did. And I just never told him for a long
time even though, you know, when I started doing the work at the Esperanza years
later it was just all over the place, so – and I ended up telling him
as well.

So I was pressured, you know, to do a lot of stuff, you know, I was –
like when I quit my job at Southwest Voter Registration, one of the things I
had wanted to do was go to Nicaragua and I had saved money and, the reason I
wanted to go was because everybody that was organizing here was very white and
I was really working hard to get the Chicano community or all the Latino community
to be more engaged in what was going on in international level – especially
in Central America, but just in general. And again, it’s just who had
the privilege to go over there and what everybody that was going there was just
really excited about, you know, going to exotic lands – [inaudible] –
and learning. Yeah, they were really committed to the struggle there, but it
just didn’t feel right. But everybody that went, you know, had the money
to do that. So I wanted to – and they all came back with slides, slide
shows, and I wanted to come back with something that was more – you know,
that you could see those people talk to themselves rather than me being the
person that spoke for them.

So I was planning to go and my partner and friend at that time, Betty, you
know, wasn’t going to go. She was ROTC – a scholarship to go into
college, so she was studying to be a nurse. She is a nurse and she ended up
joining the military. She went to Nicaragua with me even though I didn’t
want her to go because it was like, okay, good, I can be away from her for this
moment, and she said she didn’t want to go but then she ended up going
because she was – and, I mean, on some level it was good to have another
person there to help with the filming because one of us had to carry all the
stuff and the other one would do the camera; one had to interview while the
other one did the camera. And it’s just, you know – it is just easier
to travel with another person, but the abuse continued over there, too. I mean,
and I was always just more, like, shamed all the time, like from this apartment
that we lived in, in San Antonio to places we stayed in Nicaragua. I mean, it’s
like, there was – like, the apartment here was a duplex and I was, like,
these people next door can hear this. [Laughs.] It’s like, you know, it
was like – I was ashamed, you know.

And yet, you know, also it was, “Can’t you hear and why aren’t
you calling?” I didn’t have a phone in that place either because
there was – I just never did and I didn’t know about living really,
and I somehow didn’t need the phone. But then, in those moments of crisis
it was like, why don’t I have a phone here? And maybe that was a conscious
effort on this other person’s part not to let me – not to think
about the phone or whatever. And we were very isolated, and yet I did continue
to work on Central America stuff, so that was kind of finally out, besides work,
you know. And what was good for her was I was making money, right? So economically
I could provide for whatever.

MS. CORDOVA: Was she physically hurting you?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yes. Yes. And then – but in hindsight, it’s
like all the emotional and psychological stuff was just crazier for me, right?
But, yeah, I mean – and I could defend myself but I never, hit back. And
I was, again, in that moment was like, where is there help for this person?
I need to get help for this person. This person needs to get counseling –
you know, talking to a lot of people but not finding the hope. There was no
community to reach out to. And the saving grace was just friendships with other
– and again, I kept on organizing.

So I finally, in ‘84, met one of the women, Susan Guerra, who ended
up helping to – you know, dream with me the Esperanza. And she was a straight
woman, married with two kids, and – or one kid at that time. And so we
just clicked, you know. She had gone to Norway and she was coming back, and
so she had an experience of going away, of coming back, of being radical, of
looking for a place. And she had been looking for me. They called me once. I
didn’t return that call. [Laughs.] And then she didn’t call me back
for another year because she was organizing around the International Women’s
Day. And so when I did talk to her, we just clicked and we became really good
friends.

And so she’s the person that I was able to confide in about the abuse,
the relationship I was in, little by little. And then I was also getting a crush
on her, she was getting a crush on me, but that never went anywhere. [Laughter.]
Because I think, you know, that was like, okay, this is my limit; I’m
not going to do that. But I mean – but someone that, you know –
I mean, she was seven years older than me but was really able to just kind of
pull me away from that, just to be able to say, “This is wrong; you don’t
have to be involved.” And then, again, it just happens that, you know,
if I probably hadn’t had a crush on her I wouldn’t have been able
to pull up on another level, you know. But the – you know – What
happened?

I mean, I know that – at some point I just ran off, you know, and she
helped to take me out of the house. And she had set it up for me to stay with
some friend of hers for a week and stuff like that. And my brother – my
second-oldest brother is gay, and so – I hadn’t, again, told him,
and he and I weren’t really out to each other. And because of your –
when you’re in an abusive relationship you’re still not talking
to anybody; you see your family less and all your friends, right? So she was
able to talk to him and let him know what was going on, so he kind of got involved.
And again, all hidden from my family because it’s not the best way to
come out or to – you know, it’s like, I’ve come out and now
I’ve been beat up.

MS. CORDOVA: Around this time did you also start taking film classes? I mean,
I know you took some equipment down to Nicaragua. Were you studying film?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: No. I think it was – no, I was just – video
was also just coming out as something new, and so that’s why, when I went
to Nicaragua, I just knew I was going buy video equipment and a camera and just
go and do it. So it was just in the weeks before when I purchased the equipment
and went to Nicaragua that I practiced and that sort of thing and just took
that down there. And then when I came back and did the – you know, made
the documentary, it was kind of dorky and all that stuff. But –

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.] What was it like? What was that documentary like?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, it was called Testimonios de Nicaragua
and so it was really stories of men and women, young and old and everywhere
in between, telling their stories of what the struggles were down there, and
kind of just trying to take as many interviews. So I mean, I think the stories
were fun. I just – you know, I didn’t know the technique of the
edit in the same way I knew what the language was that I wanted to do, but I
didn’t know the technology of what you could do. And so when I –
you know, when I see it it’s like, it would be nice to have done this
and this and this, but I didn’t know that.

And I worked with a film editor in Houston later on. I mean, so I came back
having made that film – I mean, so I had all this footage. And it’s
like, oh, now it costs money. You know, so I had money to buy it but I didn’t
have money to edit it. Well, being, again, in the community, it’s like,
“Will you edit, or, can you edit and how cheaply can you edit, or, can
you edit for free?” There was cable access, but cable access was so hard.
You know, you only had four hours a week to be able to go in. And so it was
like, no, I have to do better than that.

So with footage of, you know, interviews that I liked, I was able to at least
start going and showing people that had been organizing with some of the films.
And at one point I was in – [inaudible] – one of these places and
some people from El Paso saw some of the stuff, and they were like, “Oh,
you need to get a grant for this and let’s help you write a grant.”
And so they were able to help me write a grant. That got $5,000, and so we ended
up being able – then we had to find the editor, who ended up being with
Southwest Alternative Media Project in Houston, and they helped edit. So they
just, you know, did the basic stuff. You know, throughout the year that I was
looking to edit it, people were helping to transcribe hours and hours of, you
know, stuff.

But – so different people in the community also participated, because
I think everybody was excited about this idea. And then – so it got done
and it turned out to be like about 55 minutes or something, because I think
that editor at least knew that it had to be about that long or shorter.

And then I took that video – and the idea, again, was to use it to educate,
not to keep it and become a star, whatever, but just to take it around. And
so I went from, you know, Nacogdoches, Texas, to the NAACS Conference in El
Paso and, you know, just different places that they would – you know,
in the community.

MS. CORDOVA: And so from – what year was your trip and then what year
were you touring the film?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: So this film – like the trip was ‘84. The
film was either – you know, it was about a year later, like ‘85
or ‘86 or something like that, you know. For me it seemed ages, but for
like other filmmakers, you know, one of them, a local friend here, said, you
know, it’s because you didn’t know how hard it was that you did
it. Otherwise, you would have never done it, you know. [Laughs.] And I was like,
okay, whatever.

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: But I had to do it. I had gone and I had done all this
– so I just toured around and then I also learned about criticism and
stuff like that – too many talking heads, you know. That was the NAACS
Conference. It was like all these people older than me making, you know, criticism.
But that’s where I met up with Luz Calvo, at that NAACS Conference, and
that’s where we came out to each other. And we danced together at the
NAACS Conference. And it was like, who are all these people? Why don’t
they dance – I mean, just like women dancing together, isn’t it
cool? In ‘84 – I guess that was ‘85 or ‘86, whenever
that was, in El Paso. But in ‘84 they had it in Austin and there was just
like one or two – probably just one workshop on queer identities. And
I was real quiet, and I know that I went and probably met some people that,
you know, I can’t remember, you know, years later that probably I met
there for the first time.

And Sandra Cisneros also presented that time, and she had just moved to San
Antonio. So we became friends there and continue to this day. I mean, not real
super-close friends because she’s so busy and I’m always busy, but
with those places that like her relationship was – she was known in ‘84,
but not – she became more famous. And so, you know, to be able to support
her as she was kind of needing to be supported – that’s the reason
I think she continues to be friends because, you know, nobody was – again,
women’s voices, right? And that was constantly something that was important
to the Esperanza and continues to be important.

MS. CORDOVA: And so after – let’s see. So you left Southwest Voter
Education Project in –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: In ‘84.

MS. CORDOVA: – ‘84.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah.

MS. CORDOVA: You went to Nicaragua –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Eighty-four. So I probably took like May, June and went
away for two months.

MS. CORDOVA: Right. And then you came back, and what kind of work did you
start doing?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Anything.

MS. CORDOVA: Anything? [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: It was so much fun. It was like I didn’t have a
job. I didn’t want a job. I just wanted to, you know – what I was
hoping to do was just to, like, work at H.E.B. or something like that and have,
you know, enough money just to get me around but not – but I guess I wanted
to do the film and I guess I wanted to do some other stuff.

Oh, and between – no, Southwest – I quit – oh, and I came
back – oh, no. I went to MALDEF afterwards, because MALDEF –

MS. CORDOVA: Okay. After Nicaragua.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: I think so, yes.

MS. CORDOVA: Okay.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: And I was there for a while and then I quit because of
the abuse.

MS. CORDOVA: How long were you there in –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Like three months.

MS. CORDOVA: Yeah.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah. Because I was – and I came out to my boss
and it was like, this is just what’s happening in my life and I can’t
stay here. You know, like I did things that I’d think nobody else is going
to do that. I could have just said I have to leave; I have some problems at
home, you know. But it was like, I’m in an abusive relationship; this
person is beating me up; this is happening. And I was like – and I’m
not being a good worker, you know. And that was what it was. And I just wasn’t
able to keep up with the work.

And it was interesting because, you know, I don’t know, like, while
I was in me desk, you know, which again I was there three months so there wasn’t
too much stuff, but I remember opening one of these drawers and there was a
book about abuse. And I was like – and I just thought it was coincidental
because I wasn’t telling anybody about anything. And so either the person
who had been in that place before was in an abusive relationship, too –
it was like that was so perfect because I was able to read that this was, you
know, something going on all the places, you know, and these were the exact
sort of, you know – what was the word? I’m tired. [Laughs.] You
know, practices, you know, whatever, you know – I mean, jealousy to this
and to this and that. And so I was like okay.

So then I quit there and then I actually went to Nicaragua. Or no –
no, that’s when I had already come back. And then I left that relationship,
and then when I just – I guess I was just trying to – I moved from
there. I mean, even though I escaped I had to come back and pick up stuff, and
like I had all my films from Nicaragua, right? They were at the house and I
had all these things I just wanted to take. And so I snuck into the house one
day and got caught, you know – [laughs] – and got beat up really
bad, like the worst beating I got was, you know – I slammed accidentally,
probably, against one of the doors and couldn’t hear, and all that sort
of stuff. So it was pretty bad.

And then she took me from there to – she was going to take an exam at
the nursing program so she took me, and I went with her and basically stayed
and then when she was taking the exam then I ran away. So I was able to run
to the local restaurant and then call my friend Susan, and then she came and
picked me up. And you know, my fear was like she’s going to find me; she
was going to find me. It’s like I was so far away, I could have gone in
any direction; there was no way – but I – she was definitely searching,
you know, around neighborhoods and stuff like that.

And so then what happened was Sandra Cisneros was moving away from her house
and Susan knew about that, so she said, you should rent this place, you know.
So it was further away and in a different side of town, which is the side of
town I still live in. So I kind of connected to that neighborhood.

MS. CORDOVA: Which side of town?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: It’s in lower King William, and now I live in La
Vaca, which is a little bit close by to it. But I liked it a lot because there
were a lot of Chicanos in the community, more middle class, but there was a
sense of neighbors and the community, people around you. And so I think it was
just kind of low-key there for a while.

And so I would take a job, you know. I guess I like probably worked with Lalo
Valdez. He was doing some research. I think he was looking at stuff in the west
side and he needed somebody for a month or two, and so I would get paid like
$500 to do that. And then I would live off of that for another month or so.
And then I got to travel. So I – a brother of mine, Hernando, got married
so I went over there.

And I was doing research – I think I was getting ready for the Esperanza
and so I was looking for similar institutions. I was looking to see just what
cultural programming was happening in these other places and, you know, picking
up literature at every bookstore I could to see what sort of way people programmed
their groups or individuals, or what was out there.

So, you know, so I would get myself to a town like San Francisco or New York
or D.C. and knock on doors, you know, okay, LAMBDA Legal Defense, okay –
you know, without any, you know, setting up appointments or anything like that
I’d just show up. And then they met with me – they would meet with
me or they’d – sometimes I’d just sit in on this meeting.
And I just – like the whole thing about gay marriage; I’m totally
against it but I remember being at one of those early meetings 20 years ago
where people – where it was the men versus women; the gay men wanted to
push this marriage thing and all the lesbian lawyers are like, no, you know,
it’s just really dumb. And I kind of still stayed firm to being anti-marriage
– a marriage abolitionist or something like that.

MS. CARDOVA: Maybe as a marriage abolitionist but not commitment? I mean,
you went through a commitment ceremony of some kind, right?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was more because friends asked
me to do that. [Laughs.] Yeah, sometimes I don’t think these things through,
because that was in Austin and there was sort of the Texas push to try to –
recognizing sex partners through – I don’t even know what it was
called. And I got a call from I guess the lesbian and gay rights lobby and they
needed people to go to Austin. And it was one of those last-minute things; I
was like, I don’t want to go – I don’t – you know, but
I’ll just show up. And I was in Austin – that’s what it was.
My partner at that time was from Austin, so we would go every once in a while.
So we were there and it was like, okay, get up – got up late, went over
there, and then the camera shot and there we were on TV. And I think we were
on the “700 Club” also. [Laughs.] And so people locally saw it on
the “700 Club” and wrote about it in the paper, and somebody else
said they caught it in Ms. Magazine, or something like that.

So – yeah, but it was more to just kind of support of what was being
said at that time. And now that the marriage issue has really become, you know,
just a big push, I’ve really kind of questioned it and challenged it and
kind of – and I just see a lot of organizing going around, especially
by young people who just think it’s – well, this is the issue. I
go, why is it the issue? It’s not anything that’s passionate for
me. I’m not – you know, you have to be strategic when you think
of what issue you’re going to go after. And, I mean, I think there are
a lot of people that are definitely interested, but it’s not like the
stuff that’s causing people, you know, to march up and down the streets,
you know. I mean – and the issues are, oh, because you get healthcare
benefits and you get all the benefits, you know, of having a spouse. But, again,
most people – especially when you think of Texas, who has insurance, you
know? There should be insurance for everybody, not just because you’re
married. That shouldn’t be a privilege just because you’re married;
it should just be a right for every human being, punto, like, well, but still,
you know, at least it gives people a choice.

But I’ve seen a lot of – you know, so there’s that kind
of like you get these privileges for being married. And then everybody –
then a larger part might be like, well, you know, it’s about assimilating,
being like everybody else. My mom, my dad, they want to go to a wedding, you
know. So they accept me this much; let’s have a wedding. So it’s
more of that assimilationist sort of ideal. And you know, and that – I
mean, for me it’s like being gay. It’s, again, about being different.
Why do you want to be like everybody else?

MS. CORDOVA: It’s not just that you’re against marriage for gay
people; it’s for everyone?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah.

MS. CORDOVA: Yeah, okay.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yes, for sure.

MS. CORDOVA: I just wanted to be clear.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah, yeah. No, for sure.

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, and again, would I have been married? But it’s
just really surprising when I think of, again, how the younger generation’s
coming up, you know, it’s – who’s teaching? They’re
all going to college but who’s teaching any feminist ideology/thinking?
You know, what are they – or is it just being taught in a way that it’s
just, you know, a way to think but not a way to act, you know?

I mean, all the people I know that are in their – women that are in
their 50s and 60s who married who were going to – at that time, in the
‘70s and the ‘60s – to colleges, they maintained their names.
Right now everybody has a slash, you know, and it’s like it’s cool.
Not that everybody I know, but it’s just like, you know, whereas the younger
people coming through it’s like, you know, they just haven’t really
done some sort of examination about those things and so it’s just kind
of accepted. And I guess that’s what’s – you know, again,
it’s what’s in the world. You read about it, you watch it on TV
and everyone just kind of accepted it. There’s got to be a more critical
– [laughs] – way to think about things.

And so – I mean, a week ago I probably had my hardest conversation with
somebody I hadn’t seen for about 20 years. Just ran into them at a restaurant.
And yeah, she was like, well, it’s a choice. You have a choice if you
want, I think. I said, “People don’t have choices.” [Laughs.]
[Inaudible]. You know, and I just – and her – and she was just determined
because, you know, that’s what it was. And her partner of two years wasn’t
necessarily interested in it either but I think felt supported finally when
she heard me and my partner talking about it. And it was like, yeah, that’s
right, da-da-da-da. And it’s like the problem even in her relationship;
she just kind of keeps a little quiet about it because this other one seems
to be just really into it. So again, it’s just kind of going into it just
because everybody else is. And, well, there was a marriage procession and everybody
went, you know. So it was, like, probably what I did that one moment, but I
really did it just to support this other Chicana who was a lesbian/gay rights
lobbyist, the director at that point, and she really wanted me to do that. So
–

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: It’s not a belief for me, so –

MS. CORDOVA: And how long did that commitment last?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: That was 13 years.

MS. CORDOVA: Thirteen years.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: But I think, again, it’s like – I mean, a
good person and all that sort of stuff but she’s just – and very
much involved in my life still to this day. But –

MS. CORDOVA: Right, because she works here, correct? Or –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: She doesn’t. Well, she’s on the board.

MS. CORDOVA: The board.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: She does not work for Esperanza.

So I mean, there’s a lot of traveling and all that sort of stuff. But
again, it’s just –

MS. CORDOVA: And these were kind of informational interviews, right, that
you were doing while you were traveling?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I wanted to know, and I had the flexibility,
I think, to be able to just, you know, again, work a month, and then all of
a sudden, oh, there’s something going on over there; let’s go, you
know, there’s this going on in this other place so let’s just go.

And I traveled by myself. My sister graduated in ‘84, so I went with
my partner at that time. And that was, again, a bad situation just because everywhere
she went – you know. And again, it’s always funny because people
see that you might be in a bad situation but nobody knows how to kind of deal
with that, and so most people just tend to keep quiet and not get involved.
I know that when I saw there were abusive relationships in front of me going
on or, you know, could see it, I took to the person that I thought was probably
being abused.

And my – Gloria, my second partner’s ex-girlfriend, was in an
abusive relationship, and I, like, went to her and I said, “You know,
you need to get out of this relationship.” And it was like, get the hell
out of my life. I said, “Well, I was just trying to help you.” Okay.
So it was like, you know, you can get that sort of response. And I didn’t
kind of let up, you know. And I also found that I got real angry that, again,
there was nobody there for support. Then I really got involved more in gay organizing.
And again, there was nothing happening in town, but it was like, how come you
we don’t know what’s happening – oh, when I had left here
I also went to New Haven for about a couple of weeks off to get away from San
Antonio. And so within New Haven, my ex-roommate was able to come and put me
in contact with all these nonprofit social service agencies that were dealing
with abuse in gay relationships and all. And so I was like, why isn’t
that here? You know, that should be back in San Antonio. That should be around.

And I finally found a gay man who was a counselor who kind of gave me contact
with a white lesbian. And also – and I guess when I was with Susan Guerra,
she was also trying to help me out. And so the only people she knew was through
St. Mary’s University, and they have the graduate students going counseling
sessions and stuff like that. It was free – [laughs] – but it was
like the young Latina-Puertorriqueña thing. It was like, you know, “Why
don’t you want to be straight?” So that sort of moving me, trying
to get me to be straight. And it was just more interesting, just probably as
a subject, to kind of question me and my gayness. And it was like that wasn’t
working, so, you know, trying to say, okay, how do we create programs, projects
that really help support, because I’m not the only one in these relationships.
And there were only gay men that seemed to have some sort of programs going
on, but nothing for lesbians.

MS. CORDOVA: And did they have an organization?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: No, there wasn’t – I mean, I think the gay
organizing in San Antonio had its ups and downs, so I think in the ‘70s
there was stuff going on. And there were different projects that I was able
to connect to. There was like a Gay Pride fest that was just starting up, and
so I was like, okay, let me find out what they’re doing. And there were
probably some more political types. I can’t remember what their names
were. I remember going to one of those meetings and Maria Berriozabal, who was
a city councilwoman remembers – she just told me recently, she said, “I
remember when you came up to me.” She said, “I went to speak at
that thing.” And I said, “Yeah, I remember. You were there and I
didn’t know you were speaking.” And she said, “Yeah, you were
real active.”

And so, I mean, I was just kind of engaged with those, but again, they were
all just small and just kind of – I mean, in the same way that they still
are, you know, 20-plus years later, not much organizing, political organizing
and power sort of thing. And it’s all very gay-identity. So I think, again,
for what I’ve done and maybe – [inaudible] – your little bit
of, you know, okay, you’re a Chicano identity, you’re a woman and
you’ve got this identity, and then try to be able to say it’s all
these things, right? And kind of that’s the way I look at things and I
just can’t – you know, I couldn’t just be a gay activist.
It’s like – and this is the point I – I mean, I’m real
scared of gay organizing, too, because – or any single-issue identity
politics.

But at that time I was able to at least kind of know and learn on my own what
was going on besides just the bars, right? So there was a newspaper in town,
and I got to know the newspaper editor, who was a professor at UTSA and in political
science. He was a white man, and I don’t think anybody with that sort
of educational background has ever run a newspaper since that time. So at least
I was able to kind of get involved with him, so it wasn’t just, as they
call, the rag and just a lot of bar talk or whatever; it had some issues, not
super – whatever. And he wanted writers, and it was, like, start writing
and go do this and do that. And so I just kind of did that on the side as well.
So I was doing that work as well and kind of exposing myself. I was reading
the paper and saying, oh, this – so when I would go to New York, I would
know what sort of national organizations to kind of hit up on and just kind
of looking them up and just – and that’s how I got to know New York
a lot better, too, just walking up and down a lot – and again, doing things
because I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to do them. [Laughs.]

MS. CORDOVA: How long was this process going on that you did this, this sort
of investigating and researching?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, I started – I finally got – in ‘85
I started working again, so probably just a year, but I mean, two – a
year where I really was flexible with the time. And then by some time in ‘85,
I got a job with Chicano Health Policy Development. So that year was the most
flexible. And it was because that ‘84 to ‘85 – because I left
Betty in ‘85. So, because of my lack of jobs, the security wasn’t
the same, and that’s where the abuse also expands, because, as you know
if you study it, it says, you know, part of that is that security. And so, I
mean, again, I wasn’t making that much – $16,000, $17,000. I guess
that was a lot because, you know, 20 years later, people still make that amount
of money. And then, you know, when I quit then I go back and get this other
job.

MS. CARDOVA: And what were you doing with Chicano Health –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: I was more of a counselor, counseling to get kids into
higher ed, but focused within the medical field, or whatever. They were all
about health policy, but they were really – they had some people working
just to get college age kids into – to be doctors rather than just, you
know, practitioners or PAs, or whatever, so we were kind pushing and helping
in that. And I guess it was just another friend of mine that was there and said
there’s a job, and I was there for less than a year and then we all got
fired because we were – again, it was just challenging the staff –
the director who wanted to change the name from Chicano to Center for Health
Policy Development, which is what it’s called now, so getting rid of the
whole Chicano or Latino or Hispanic – you know, nothing to that extent.
And so many of us, you know, came with that, and it’s like, “No,
it’s got to stay.” And we had no right and we couldn’t speak
to him, and he just didn’t want to. So he laid us all off – or he
fired – no, I guess he laid us all off and claimed that it was because
there was no money. So like eight or nine of us were let go. Since I was the
last one hired, I was definitely the first one out of there.

But I think part of that was, you know, I was probably instigating a lot of
the frustration, and I wouldn’t appreciate anybody coming in here and
changing this organization either. But I think, unlike that organization, like
everybody knows who the board of directors is here; they’re friends of
people who are on the board of directors. The board of director folks work,
again, as editors, as carpenters, as, you know, curators of art exhibits. They’re
here, you know, where over there it was just like – it was very much hierarchical;
we never saw them. They only had meetings every once in a while. And the director
– I mean, everybody really talked to me and there was a lack of respect
because I am one of their equals, and so they’re going to kind of get
a sense of like the 20-plus years of experiencing doing this sort of work that
I have, and so they think – you know, again, because sometimes it’s
just, again, commonsense sort of work.

But, you know, I mean, I had to learn how to write a press release. You know,
when I used to – before there was an Esperanza I had never written a press
release. I don’t know who the press – I mean, I read the paper but
I don’t know the process. Over here, one of the first things they all
learn how to do, and it’s just kind of – it’s real simple,
yeah, but to write a good press release is not as easy, either. And so, you
know, I have another person, Barbara Renaud Gonzalez, and she’s more focused
on the – the writer and the communicator here, and she’ll kind of
make fun of some of their writing and say, what is this; who wrote this, you
know? [Laughs.] But again, even just that process – you know, that we
have a list of hundreds of names of media contacts locally as well as nationally.

You know, when I was doing that in ‘84, ‘85, ‘86, you know,
doing the work around Central America organizing, it was me trying to do it
all by myself. So it’s those experiences that I brought here and that,
you know, again, people then take for granted. You know, it’s not –
you know, it’s like how you are with people, how you treat people, how
you – so again, it’s like, well, I’m just working here and
it’s my job and I don’t have to cheat anybody – you know,
they’re in my way. And I say, no what does it mean to organize you have
to build relationships. It’s all about relationship-building. And they’re
like – [laughs].

MS. CARDOVA: So let’s see, when you left – or when you were laid
off from Chicano Health Policy, did you get unemployment?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Mm-hmm. [Laughter.]

MS. CORDOVA: I am familiar with that scenario.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: It was more of that and traveling and just more of that.
That’s what happened to me. But that –

MS. CORDOVA: So you had time and you had income, so you could organize.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah, and then that time specifically was focused on the
Esperanza, just landing that one out. And it was like, okay, that’s it;
I – you know. Because when I got hired for that job I remember the interviewer
saying, “I am going to challenge and I will take initiative. You know,
if you have any problems, please don’t hire me.” You know –
oh, no, that sounds great. So all of that sort of stuff that I made very clear.
And so – and there was another Latino man I was working with, right, so
I just didn’t want to find myself in that same situation. So when it happened,
I was like, okay, I can’t do this any more – you know, we’d
been dreaming something – this other project. We’d been talking
about it. We keep on talking about it. I had just gotten fired, you know. Susan’s
over here, Carol’s over here, this person’s over here – you
know, like different people. It’s like somebody’s got to just kind
of focus on it.

So, yeah, I went away again and picked up more information and then just kind
of – somebody was able – you know, it was me just able to push the
other ones to say, okay, let’s do it; okay, now let’s meet about
this. Okay, here’s the information. Okay. Now we want a space. Okay, let’s
go and look for spaces. Okay, well, I’ll call up and I’ll set up
meetings. So then from – you know, for six to eight months, I guess, was
doing a lot of research and writing things down, putting it on paper and finding
a place, which was the place at 1305 North Flores. And, you know, and then fixing
it up, and also then finding out that night that there was this film school
that had started up in Cuba.

So that happened, in fact, at the same time as we were starting the Esperanza.
And so then I had to make a decision. Well, I applied to the film school. Eduardo
Diaz was the director for the film program at the Guadalupe [Guadalupe Cultural
Arts Center, San Antonio, Texas], and he had seen the film and he was part of
the board of directors of the Nuevo Cine Latino Americano. And so, as a Chicano
representative, you know, he was going to be allowed to accept one student.
And so we all had to take an exam. It was all in Spanish. And I don’t
know why I was accepted but, you know, they accepted me. And so it was just
a choice, like, you know – and this happened – like, I found out
in December and the Esperanza was opening up in January. Like, we had –
and so I had to make a decision, and it was real hard and it was real easy.
You know, it’s like, well, I don’t know if I’ll have another
chance to go to Cuba so I’d better do it. And we hadn’t really started
with the Esperanza, so –

MS. CORDOVA: Did you just delay the Esperanza, or –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: No. Susan ended up being the first director.

MS. CORDOVA: Okay.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Maybe we would have been – maybe we would have been
co-chairs; maybe she would have always been the director. But she was a volunteer
director. And I probably would have been a volunteer director, but instead I
went away for the next year and a half. And within that –

MS. CORDOVA: And that was over nineteen-eighty- –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Seven.

MS. CORDOVA: – seven, up to ‘88.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Mid-’88.

MS. CORDOVA: Okay.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Right – yeah. I started working at the Esperanza
in September of ‘88.

MS. CORDOVA: Okay. Yes, and, right, and the Esperanza opened in January of
–

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Eighty-seven.

MS. CORDOVA: Eighty-seven.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah.

MS. CORDOVA: All right. Okay.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: So yeah, all the – most of ‘86 is, yeah, doing
the research about the Esperanza and – or other organizations, right.
So again, there’s that whole political – like so La Peña
in Berkeley is, you know – it’s like, wow, look at all these films
that they’re doing, or they’re doing presentations; maybe I should
go – they’re doing this. And it’s all got a real political
stance on – you know, progressive stance on all of that, you know.

And then I heard about the one in Austin. So then I remember from the Chicana
Health Policy Development calling up, looking for Cynthia Perez and trying to
talk to her, and see what she – and going to visit her. So I wasn’t
just being national; I was trying to also make contact. And you know, she had
to check me out. Apparently she called her contacts here before she got back
to me.

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: I remember I was always looking up, you know, Angela Davis’s
numbers – like she could be a good speaker, you know, just thinking those
ways and just kind of finding contacts for future programming. We never brought
Angela, but – [laughs] – I had her number, name and –

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: I still have a new number, so –

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.] Well, you know, I think that’s actually a really
good breaking point for us.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: A good place to stop, yeah.

MS. CORDOVA: So I’m going to stop right here.

[Break.]

MS. CORDOVA: All right, we are recording. This is Cary Cordova for the Archives
of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution. Today is July 2nd, 2004, and this
is my second session with Graciela Sánchez at her offices at the Esperanza.
And this is disc one.

And, Graciela, so we’re coming back to our interview, and you had mentioned
that maybe there were some things that you had been thinking about that we had
skipped over on our last session, maybe about your mother. So do you want to
–

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah, I guess I just – when you asked, like, what
my parents had passed on culturally, I just wanted to basically – I must
have mentioned that my mom gave me everything, but I think on some levels she’s
the keeper of the story. So she’s the storyteller. And within those stories,
besides the history, especially on her mom’s side and, you know, the women
of her side, the values of being buena gente [good people] I think are the concepts
that were very much ingrained in myself and in all her children, I guess, and,
I guess, whoever she runs into. So I think that’s just critical –
again, just trying to be good people, and how do you become a good person? Well,
part of it was in the stories that she offered. It also was in the actions,
as I guess I mentioned. And again, as an 81-year-old, she still continues to
take care of people who are younger and older than she is, because that’s
her job, is to take care of people. And usually, again, it’s taking care
of the old people, but you know, it’s like, Mom, you know, they’re
all dying around you, and they’re people that are younger.

So it’s just that. I mean, I don’t think – and she tells
on both sides of the – you know, both sides of the family. So she gets
– I get to know my aunts and uncles on both sides of the family and always
with this real good sense of who they are. And it’s – you know,
rather than just kind of coming down on people and saying, “Oh, they were
ugly to me, or they were this and that.” There was just always kind of
an affirming way to look at all the people in the family.

And I think one of the things that she was concerned was is when people die,
there’s always the fight between the siblings or the family about who’s
going to own this or that. And she said over and over she’s seen families
fall apart, and the one thing she wants her children to do is continue to see
each other and love each other after she’s gone. So that’s –
her job is just to make sure those relationships are positive.

And as I’ve seen, you know, when I was 13 my grandmother, who lived
next door to us, died. You know, all her siblings kind of came in and picked
up everything that they had thought their mother – and just took things
away, even though it was my mom who took care of her, even – it was our
family who – you know, the kids who played with all that stuff. We were
liking seeing things go in. It was like, “Mom, don’t you get to
keep any of this, Mom?” She said, “It’s not important,”
you know. If they want to take it, let them take it. I’m not going to
fight them. I’m not going to have these arguments or anything like that.

So that’s just been a way that she’s maintained her relationships
with her siblings, even though like for me it hurts to see, you know, things
that I’d like to, you know, keep. And what I’ve also found out is
like some of my cousins have ended up having garage sales and given away things
from, you know, my uncles or grandparents, you know, without even letting us
know about it. And so it’s like, “Well, if you’re going to
sell it, let your family know so they can try getting first dibs.” But
I know, you know, friends of mine who were at the estate sale of an uncle of
mine who was one of the first, like, jewelers in this town, and, you know, from
his drawings and his work itself, you know – none of us found out about
it except through these friends who went to the estate sale.

So anyway, it’s not a place that we get angry and have fights about.
So I think, you know, those are the – that’s one of the important
roles my mom has played is, again, this storyteller and the values that those
stories have.

MS. CORDOVA: And do you also do a lot of writing? I’m just wondering,
have you written down a lot of these stories? I know you produced an article
not too long ago in the Women’s Studies Journal sort of talking
about the importance of oral history. Do you also try to archive it at all?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Because I don’t have a lot of time, I haven’t
been able to do much of anything, so that article was basically speeches coming
together and kind of formulating several of those together and then adding different
things. Anzaldúa had died, and that was actually a response. When I heard
about it I was in an airplane, so I had three hours, and so I was able to just
sit there and reflect. And it was about Anzaldúa but it was also about,
you know, what it means to be growing up and to struggle with younger Chicanas
and, you know, just all of those frustrations that I was having, but it was
because I had that chunk of time on an airplane.

For my family, I think I’m trying to grab that camera as much as possible
and turn it on, cameras being something more obtrusive than, say, this audiotape,
but I also want to see. And so, after a while, you know, sometimes people calm
down. But I also forget to bring the camera as much as I should. But for the
Casa de Cuentos program that we had here at the Esperanza, I pulled the camera
out and tried to document elders from the community, and my parents sometimes
are within that mix, so at least those stories are kind of being documented
somewhere.

The event that we had – [inaudible] – we just documented, and
we had young people going around videotaping and audio taping. But again, we
need to train them to do it better because it’s a skill and it’s
something that – or even if they don’t have the practice –
or the teaching, at least if they do it enough times I think they learn the
skill themselves. And so far it’s kind of been funny watching the mediocre
sort of videotaping that they’re working on – but at least we’re
trying to document something, and sometimes that’s the only thing you
have, and a few years later it might mean something to someone. We don’t
do anything with it.

MS. CORDOVA: I mean, just because you mentioned Anzaldúa, would you
like to maybe talk about her relationship to the Esperanza or what she meant
to you? I know one of the things that I was surprised at is how little there
was in the general media in terms of announcing her recent death. And I thought
that was a gaping hole. So maybe you could just sort of talk about her. I mean,
she spoke here –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah, I actually met her in ‘82.

MS. CORDOVA: Right, and we mentioned that you read –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Right. And so we it’s a 20-plus year history with
her, I guess. And maybe because I met her at this place where, you know, her
name was just kind of starting to get known, there wasn’t that fear that
I think people have when it’s like, oh, this is a great person. Although
I think, again, sometimes it’s that sense of, you know, I need to meet
that person or that person needs to come to the Esperanza that kind of plays
more of an important role than how I personally might be nervous or anxious
about dealing with them.

So with Anzaldúa – I mean, because I knew her work, I thought
it was really important for her to come to San Antonio. And somehow I found
her phone number – you know, I guess we have enough contacts. And I remember
the first time I invited her to come to San Antonio, and she said, “Well,
how much can you pay me?” And I’m like – you know, I hadn’t
paid a fee to – I mean, I think this is before Esperanza was even receiving
arts funding, so it was a difficult thing to answer. And I said, “Well,
how much do you want me to pay you?” And they never offer that. And then
– so I said the horrible number of $500, which in ‘88 or ‘89,
the Esperanza was just a couple years old. And you know, she said, “Well,
normally I’d get $5,000, but, you know, I’ll do that for you all,”
you know. And so, like, oh, okay, you know. So it was new to me, and then I
felt like I had insulted her. And you know, I’m sure she knew better than
to feel – you know, she accepted for the $500. And she must have been
traveling around because it was – I didn’t have to worry about other
things.

And then trying to get the Latina lesbian organization Ellas to cosponsor,
to help out, and they were a little resistant. Some people knew who she was;
some people didn’t know who she was. And so I was also saying, can you
help put the money together, you know, even if it’s a hundred bucks, and
we can do something very specifically that’s related to the Latina lesbians.
It doesn’t have to happen at the Esperanza – just something more
intimate. And they finally did, and we had a really sweet, nice, educational
time. But I think it was just more in line with being with friends.

And then we brought her again – well, and what she said at that time
was the Esperanza was the first place in San Antonio that had brought her and
invited her, and paid her fee, right, because before that when she was here,
I guess in the ‘70s, when she was trying to read, the only place that
would accept her was the gay bar. And so, she just wanted to say times were
changing, and at least she was accepted. And she repeated that story over and
over.

Of course, she finally got invited by the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center.
We went out with her afterwards and she said the same thing: It’s like
now I have come – [laughs] – around. Now they’ve accepted
me. And it was packed crowd at the Guadalupe somewhere in the ‘90s.

And then – you know, but she always made time to hang out with the Latina
lesbians that she had met, so she consistently, followed – I mean, worked
with us and gave us time. And she had gone to the NACCS – I mean, to the
Latina Texas Lesbian Conference in ‘89 in Houston. So, we went over there.
So again, it was wherever she was, if it was in the state of Texas, we were
there, just to say hello and just to keep up.

And then in ‘98 she came through Our Lady of the Lake University, and
they let us have her for one night. And so we had three poets and a lawyer.
And it kind of revolved around the arts funding and the defunding of the Esperanza.
And I know the staff sat around and tried to really think through, how do we
do this so that communities will be involved? And so we had Sharon Bridgforth,
Anzaldúa, and Yolanda Leyva ended up being the facilitator, Liliana Wilson
Grez, I think, and “La Chola con Chelo,” María Elena Gaitán.

And then the lawyer was Amy Kastely, who was the lawyer for our case. And
so that’s why there were three poets and a lawyer. [Laughs.] And again,
there was this image where it really just jumps onto – you know, afterwards,
because people were really excited about the event.

But my frustration of course was that all of the speakers really wanted to
hear the community speak, so they only really spoke for a couple of minutes
each. And all of us, you know, in the audience were like, “Tell us more,
tell us more; we want to hear more from your voices because you have to teach
us.” And for me, it was like, I want to hear that person speak or whatever,
because, you know, because we’re a community. But, I mean, that is the
point to their work, is the – that community – the community has
the answers; the community knows. And I think that was what Anzaldúa
did over and over again really well, is just – and the fact that she did
anthologies was because other people had a story to tell, and she was just,
about bringing all those voices together and acknowledging them and, I guess
knowing – getting everybody’s story then gives you the answers or
whatever. So rather than doing just all her own personal stuff, she was about
doing a lot more.

With the anthology she had so many pieces, you know – books that she
was still working on. And – you know, and those always seem to be put
in the back. I got to – when she came back in 2002, that was something
we brought her only, you know, so – because we knew that other people
had brought her since 2000 – we – This Bridge We Call Home,
that – oh, I went in February of 2002 to the 20th anniversary of Berkeley.
And so because that was the 20th anniversary I was excited about seeing what
was going to happen there. And I was disappointed that – I was expecting
something else. I mean, they were, pushing the book, but I guess, from the opening
session when the university officials came on and talked about – and the
publisher came on and talked about the importance of that moment, the word “lesbian”
was never used or, and I thought, they’ve already made it invisible. And
where the book was so transparent and, out there in ‘81, 20 years later
people were hiding it. And there was a panel of – another moment where
all these Latinas sat on the panel. There were like 12 of them in the panel,
and they were reading from this new book, and none of them read any queer –
there was no queer voice within the panel even though I knew a couple of them
were lesbians. But they decided not to select those pieces.

So I remember raising my hand and was like, this is what was great about This
Bridge Called We Call Home – [inaudible] – and, you know, what’s
happened? And then they say, well, I’m a lesbian. And I said, “Well,
why didn’t you read?” And then others just came – remained
closeted. And again, what’s the role of the university – because
I think most of them are connected to the university, and again, they –
to maintain a job, I guess they have to step away. And I guess when This
Bridge – most of them may not have been at the university. They were
just writing for themselves in the struggle of the ‘70s and the ‘80s.
So I guess just that difference.

And I know that, you know, someone like Cherríe Moraga has talked about,
again, the importance of This Bridge being at the – people who
were in the fields reading that book, and she says, now no one is writing anything
that is accessible. I mean, I was glad to hear Cherríe say that because
I know that I feel that, I pick them up but I don’t necessarily read them
in the same way. And it’s not the book that I’d hand over to the
16-year-old – that I hand over and I’d give This Bridge
to a – and it’s not that they can’t read it or anything like
that.

So from that moment I thought, you know, it would be good to have something
similar to that in San Antonio, so we invited her and she took six months or
whatever, and we brought her in November of 2002. But as people found out she
was coming, you know, she was able to have one of those nights be for people
who – you know, from her co-editor, AnaLouise Keating, who was in Denton,
who came down; and Susan Guerra, who is, again, one of the co-founders, was
visiting from Norway and so she got to be in it; and another woman of color
who found out she was going to be in San Antonio and drove from New York to
San Antonio just to be on that, you know, panel reading. And Anzaldúa
just kind of read five minutes and then left it open to Q&A with everybody
else.

Fortunately, I’d already scheduled something where she would read alone
and do her little doodles and just give a lecture. And I know that I’d
seen her give readings, and her tendency was just to read, and most people see
that as pretty boring. But I also saw her do lectures a couple of times, and
she’d took out the overhead and she would just doodle and talk about Nepantla
and – especially Nepantla; she was doing a lot more talking about that.
And so it was just fun just to sit there and have, you know, 200 people just
basically, you know, have a class with her. And I had only seen her, you know,
within the classroom of, Trinity University or, a lot of white students, or
just students, but this group of students was community. And so that was, for
me, exciting.

And she also got to spend time – I had her come to visit with the women
of Mujer Artes, who are women who are third-grade educated, fifth-grade educated,
no education, but she worked with them around storytelling and how they could
do it within the clay. And we also collaborated there with Fuerza Unida, who
were other displaced workers. So she had that with them, and then she had a
little session with the staff, and then she had a session with Latina –
with queer people of color writers. So, you know, she gave us four days, which
I knew was really sacred – well, it was her sacred time but she offered
it to us.

And then we got to drive her back home. And so that was a good trip. You know,
I actually invited a lot of people, but I really wanted to keep her to myself
and just, you know, take her one on one. But, you know, that’s where I
got to hear the stories of, you know, La Prieta, that novel that she
didn’t finish up, and another anthology and another book of – I
guess she calls it – Auto Theories and stuff like that. So there
were at least three books that she was working on. I guess all of us will be
curious how they get published or if they get published and when they get published.

So it was special because I got to visit her mother and her sister and got
to see her in her environment. And she and her family gave us Toronjas and oranges
and chiles, and we took pictures with her and then we came back and then that
was it. And a year and a half she’s gone.

MS. CORDOVA: In listening to you talk, I think of the anthologies and the
many voices, and I really think, well, of course, that was sort of a model for
Esperanza sort of trying to assemble many different voices and establish a community.
And I’m wondering, one, was there a specific mission or a specific agenda
that you really hoped to also follow with that community in building Esperanza?

And two, what challenges did you have in trying to work out decisions when
you’re trying to also collaborate? Like, what are the problems that also
come up when you need to make a decision but you also want to be respectful
of diverse voices?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Going back to – I think This Bridge –
and Borderland [Borderlands: the new mestiza = La frontera, Gloria
Anzaldúa. San Francisco : Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987] is another book
– I think Anzaldúa basically speaks to another Latina lesbian as
she speaks, you know, to Latinas in general, but then the element of also being,
you know, of working class or poor community. I mean, I think the rural/urban
is the only difference really that I see between myself and her – and
Anzaldúa, but everything else is just like – clicks with my life.
And so, you know, and again, Cherríe putting that other stuff, so kind
of reading those stories, informing and trying to basically say, okay, this
is the theory; we’re the action of it. We’re the – let’s
try to create what that world would look like. And so it is trying to bring
all those voices together. It is trying to acknowledge that there is no higher
– hierarchy – but it is about acknowledging and respecting that
we come with all these identities and no one of those identities makes us –
we all have to come together whole.

I know when the staff, a year ago, was being asked – we were doing a
little workshop and, why do they work with the Esperanza, all of them except
myself talked about how they personally felt comfortable, at ease and whole,
and that was what they needed to come and work in a place. So for them it was
really about the self coming in. For me it was like, this is what we’re
about giving to the community, and this is why I like working at the Esperanza
because of what we are helping to do; to create those futures, as we’re
helping to move forward, you know, the social justice and, you know, a movement
of social, economic and environmental justice. So for me it was everyone else,
and for them it was bringing – you know, being whole. And, you know, I
was really frustrated with their answer, but on the other hand I understood,
again, how safety, in the workplace is really important. And so from the very
young, who have never worked anywhere else, to some people in their mid-30s,
having struggled in other workplaces, to say, well, this is what I need to be
good.

But I think – in general, it is, for me, what we’re doing and
helping to create for others. So that one’s ego has to just kind of disappear
in this place. And that’s a struggle here because here’s where you
bring in the thinking – you know, the theory thinking, the academic element;
you have the artistic, creative element, and you have the activist, and all
three should be working together. And I think that artists and maybe the academic
world, a lot of the individuals kind of have to – I mean, you’re
still working within the larger context but, especially in an artist; you’re
writing for yourself or you’re performing and you’re performing
usually your own stuff, especially nowadays with performance art. Or, you’re
making a film and it’s your work even though you collaborate with others.
You know, academia makes you write, write, write, so you have to write your
own stuff.

And then I guess movement-building is about the larger community. And so there
are clashes, right? And I’ve seen so many of the staff come through here
and be really angry and frustrated after a while because from within their –
you know, the society we live in, which is each year becoming more and more
individualistic and more prone to go in that direction rather than, community
– the world pushes them to say, your voice is being lost here. And people
come from the outside and say, you’re wasting your time here. Especially
because if it’s seen as an activist-based organization, most people’s
experience with activism is in high school and college, and then you grow up
and then you get a real life; you don’t continue to do activism. And it’s
– you know, I mean, yeah, you kind of do it but it’s not –
you know.

I mean, I’ve have so many people say, okay, you know, you went to study
film in Cuba, so when are you going to get a real life and go back and make
films? And I was like, well, I am, you know, still living. And so I’ve
had to talk about being an installation artist, you know, because installation
artists are about putting things together and making – And you’re
always installing, right? So it’s like, okay, how does this person come
together with this person, or how do these groups of people come together and
how do they create that – you know. And, you know. So, you know, like
buy a building – help buy a building or do I not? So all of those decisions
are, you know, installing.

When I came back from Cuba, what I found was that I was one of the few Latinas
– puntos making you know, having had any experience doing film, and then
add to that the lesbian part, and being out, you know, we know the Latino lesbians
that are making films but they’re not necessarily out as lesbians. So
it’s like, wow, you’re really unique. Well, I didn’t like
that feeling. And it’s like – or, you know, it makes you feel good
but it’s like, well, wait a minute; my job then is to see, how can we
create a whole bunch of other young Chicanitas and Chicanitos or people from
this community that can make the films? And the struggle that I’ve had
is that I can’t be the teacher because I’ve got to do other stuff.
I would love to be the teacher, but then somebody has to write the grants or
somebody has to, you know, do the PR for all of that.

So then I said, okay, let’s find other teachers; there are other people
that know how to make film, so let’s just bring them and pull them together
with the young people. But nobody really wanted to stick around for a couple
of years to work with young people to make films. So you can get them for six
months and then you try it again and everybody’s having to learn and they’re
gone, so who suffers the most is the program and the youth connected to that.
Or just any – it didn’t have to be young people; it could have been
people in their 30s or their 70s making films, about their stories. But nobody
wanted to just work with young people – or to take the time to teach that
because it’s like, well, I want to make films, and I’m just here
in San Antonio for a while before I go to San Francisco, before I go to New
York. And that’s what’s happened, you know.

So again, it’s how do you just say, well, maybe my job is to do something
else. And I think when you go into communities like New York, and San Francisco,
and L.A., and Chicago, where you have a lot of people doing media art, then
you find yourself, you know, well, I don’t have to be the only person
that directs a film; you know, maybe I can teach. But here, where there are
very few folks, you know, that – you know, when you’re a filmmaker,
then that’s what you are, you’re the filmmaker, not a teacher of
film.

So all of that, I guess, to say the ego then has to kind of take a secondary
role in the work here – you know I’ve had to think as I go –
oh, yeah, it’s about service; well, we talked about service and it was
at a church, you know? Like, who does it just for the sake of doing it, you
know? People who are just – you know, give up their lives to God, or whatever,
and it’s like, well, you give up your life to the larger community. And
that’s kind of hard, you know. But I think –

MS. CORDOVA: Do you feel like you’ve missed filmmaking opportunities
for yourself? Like, are there films you regret not making?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: No, I regret that no one else is making them. I regret
that there are more people, 20 years later, after I’ve come back from
film school, who have learned to make films and they’re still not making
a film. But there are so many stories in San Antonio and no one’s making
them because they’re working to get themselves, you know, on PBS or in
Hollywood. So again, the story – you know, 20 years later, I can still
do the job, I can, you know, do the oral history programming that we’re
doing right now. Maybe someone will tell the story of – there’s
no story of San Antonio Chicanos that’s really positive and good, that
just is this – and again, there are a million stories. You know, every
day I read the paper and I see the obituaries and I’m like, ah, she was
born in 1899, or, she was born in 1911, or, he was born – and you just
see the picture and it’s like you want to know what that story was. And
that’s the sad part. But it’s like, somebody should be doing it
so where are the people ready to do it?

And I know so many of us aren’t educated, in general, in the larger
population. But again, it’s not about who goes to college. It’s
like if you just give the camera to people and, first of all, tell them that
it’s okay for them to tell that story, right, because that’s the
first place you have to get out of that whole, you know, the cultural genocide
and its effects, basically, that makes us feel like we’re stupid and ugly
and our stories aren’t worth telling. So you have to have them around,
you know, struggle with individuals for enough times and so they’re like
– they get it and then they’re ready to do the story. And again,
what usually happens here within the Esperanza is they get it and they get excited;
then they move on also. And that’s okay, you know. Even if they’re
doing it in California or they’re doing it now in school, you know, hopefully
we’ll see the effects, you know, in five years, in 10 years, you know,
what they’re creating and helping other communities, you know, see themselves
and do that.

But right now, you know, that is – you know, so I don’t regret
– I mean, like I said, I’m still videotaping, and I haven’t
created anything per se. And then, it’s even hard to do them here. But
there are little stories, you know, like we just did a film on La Gloria that’s
three minutes long. And you know, there’s something just on the Esperanza.
All the films on the Esperanza, it’s like, you know, I’ve grabbed
cameras; I’ve interviewed people. The only part I haven’t done is
edit, but I might tell people, “Well, this is what we need to do, or this
is the idea.” So on some level, I’m helping to create some of that,
and there it is, you know. But part of this work is – and then I don’t
get credit for it, and that’s, you know, okay. But if people see, you
know, that La Gloria, you know – because I know – I spoke to the
guy that ended up talking to the editor, and he said, “What do I do? How
do I direct it” – you know, Vicki wrote this poem. It’s a
great poem. We just did X, Y and Z, you know, last week, where we did that poetry
and we had the film of La Gloria, circa 1930s. So take some of that and –
you know, we have this videotape of us demonstrating, and grab some of that
and intersperse this and this and this, and do it, right?

And so they ended up doing it. And you know, I said – well, you know,
he came to me saying, I don’t know what to do. I gave him some parameters
and they moved forward, you know. And so from – you know, again, from
videotaping people to, you know – because we could have gone to that demonstration
without a camera, right? And people do that all the time. I mean, I go to a
lot of events and I see there’s no camera. This is an important event;
somebody should be taping it, even if it’s just for the sake of taping
it. And they don’t do that.

So you know, as – you know – and that’s a pain just to grab
that camera, because, you know, unless I’m doing that, you know, or can
find someone else, then it’s really me, you know. So you’ll see
many times, you know, that I’m not in any of the shots but that’s
because, you know, I’m behind it. Unfortunately, I’ve got another
person also videotaping. He’s gotten really excited, and he goes, now
I want to learn how to edit. And so, you know, because he’s been behind
the camera – so you know, we’re just both, you know – because
of the whole digital world, everything’s changed. And so it’s –
I can’t teach anybody the stuff I know and they can’t – they
are not here to teach us how to do that.

So – but we’re still creating it, again. I mean, I’m still
writing, but I’m writing grants. But to the extent – like some of
the writings that I, you know, challenge myself to say, you know, I don’t
want to write it the way a grant gets written. So I’ve been – you
know, it’s like how do I just play around with the language and, say to
the Rockefeller Foundation, this is my grant. And then it’s like, wow,
I like that, and I don’t care if we can get funded or not but that’s
the way I’m writing right now.

But again, I don’t sign my name at the end, you know, this was written
by Graciela, because, again, I think the work here is also very communal, right?
So I do a lot but I don’t do it alone. And so for me to take the credit
– and again, that comes into conflict with some people – like I
took the picture, so therefore – it’s like, don’t give me
credit; I took this because that was part of my job, or I know that people really
want it, or – you know, it’s like, oh, that was a great –
that’s a great image. You know, it’s like – and so some people
are saying, yeah, I get to do it, and it’s like, come on, you know, I
remember seeing the first one that you turned in and we hated it. [Laughs.]
And we all sat there and said, “Why don’t you try this, or why don’t
do this color? Why don’t you try this sort of font, and why don’t
you move this around?” And then, two or three days later, it’s a
different thing. And their skills were able to move it around, but other –
several people put together an idea.

And so, there shouldn’t be somebody’s byline on the site, you
know. And again, some people want it and need it, and I’ve seen ex-staff
people leave and say, you know – because here nobody – I have a
title as executive director on some level but I resisted it, but mainly it’s
because I have to sign a piece of paper that says who’s the director,
who’s the person in charge. So I have to sign that. And it’s just
kind of come, but everybody else is supposed to be staff of the Esperanza, or
what we’ve been saying a lot is we’re the Buena gente in the Esperanza.

And so, you know, when they leave, though, they – like I was the assistant
director too – and I did X, Y and Z, and it’s like, well, that’s
good. They can do it. I mean, it’s not going to – that’s what
they need to do if they move up to the world. But it was things that weren’t
really – existing in this environment.

So I think all of that – just say, yeah, it follows with Anzaldúa
kind of, you know, putting everybody else ahead and kind of sharing that information,
and then just the connections of race, class, gender and sexuality. And that’s
still a struggle, I think, because I think so much of, you know, the people
who we work with are still – we get erased, so we’ll be doing work
around immigration just as much as anybody else, but when they bring together
a group of people, they’ll exclude us because they see us as queer or
they see us as cultural workers and they don’t understand how culture
has to do with social justice organizing. And yet many – most of the time,
you know, we’re organizing most of that work.

One time I asked a 50-something-year-old, why do you come – a straight
man, why do you come to the Esperanza? Why do the other ones not come? Is it
because of homophobia? And he said, “No.” He said, “The reason
they don’t come is because you all do the work and you do that much better
than they do.” I do think that it’s homophobia, actually, in addition
to that. [Laughter.] But it was nice to hear it in that context, because, you
know, we do so much of – you know, just a lot of work – just requires
a lot of work.

So – but they continue just to see race and class, race and class, and
not gender and not sexuality, none of that other sort of stuff. And you know,
I don’t see much organizing within the white women’s community right
now at all, or the lesbian/gay community of San Antonio at all. Again, they’ve
become – it’s more about assimilation and they don’t really
want it to be part of coming out; they don’t want really do the stuff
with connecting to other issues. And that’s where we’ve been attacked.
The gay conservative community in ‘97 and all, just attacked the –

MS. CORDOVA: I did want to talk about Cuba. And I know that you went there
and you did this film, No Porque lo Diga Fidel Castro [1988, Not
Because Fidel Castro Says So]. And, one, I guess I’d just love to
hear about the process of making that film. And then, two, maybe you could talk
about the community of gays and lesbians there in Cuba versus your experience
here in San Antonio.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, there are a couple of films. I mean, again, we all
worked on each other’s films. The first year was making a three-minute
film, black and white. It was a real, you know, 16-millimeter film, so –
how to work in film. And then the second year was working and doing a 13-minute
documentary in whatever. And all of those were just choices, right?

And in the first year – again, the school itself was, you know, one
student from the United States and basically six kids from each of these other
respective communities. So the Colombianos, the – Puerto Ricanos –
the Chileanos and all that, you know, could have up to six students. So we came
in with a class of about 86 students. And so they came from 38 different countries,
and they accepted also kids from Vietnam and from Africa. They had people from
Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique – so the lefty-leaning countries, some of
those places. [Laughs.] And communities that were in struggle and in war.

And what was interesting in that grouping, we self-selected to have smaller
crews, so I ended up being in a crew with four other women of color. Well, we
were all people of color. So I had somebody from El Salvador, a woman from Mozambique,
a woman from India, and a Colombian and myself, and we were the only group of
women that worked together. So that was a struggle, too, because I was –
I mean, on some level I was kind of pushing that because of my need for safety,
but they also needed it.

And it was really good because we could see the changes as the women were
– we were in a group of five, but we also helped in a group of 10 with
five other men, and so that was like a section. And when those women were with
men, they really stepped away from, you know, picking up cameras and doing what
everybody else was doing, but when we broke up into the smaller groups, then
they had to pick up the cameras and do the lights and do the editing. And so
it was just good to see that transformation.

Again, I was 26, so I was one of the older students. Most of the kids that
came in were between 18 and 24, I guess, because they were coming to that school
as an undergraduate sort of program. And for me, they just knew that I was interested
in film, so it’s like, well, you’re interested. Because that was
the first entering class, they didn’t have a kind of age range. So there
were the 18-year olds, and I wasn’t the oldest person; there were some
people in their 30s that were coming from El Salvador, in war-torn El Salvador,
who were there for six months just to learn the skill and to be able to go back.
And that program was you can be here for six months, you can be here for a year
and a half, you can be here for two years or three years; it just depends on
what it is you want to make for yourself. So some people just came in for those
six months and then went back. I stayed for a year and a half. And so again,
the age, kind of I was a little more seasoned and so, again, just to be able
to say, well, I want to work with this group of other women. And so we all made
films of women within our respective communities.

And I ended up essentially pulling Sandra Cisneros’s House on Mango
and probably a couple of other little stories – or sentences from Anzaldúa,
I think, and then, I was just saying to someone, even one of the images of –
and I act in it, right, because there was no other Chicana around. [Laughs.]
And I had somebody else kind of help me co-direct my own film. And I think all
of us kind of had to play that because that was, you know, what we ended up
doing, so it was a little more difficult.

But as I’m reading some of – as I’m portraying this young
woman, there’s an image of me walking a tight wire, and that comes from
Anzaldúa language of it’s like being on a tight wire, on balance,
and all that sort of stuff. So I know that – you know, I remember pulling
a lot of books because, again, it’s like, well, I can tell my own story,
but here’s all this other language that’s here, so how do we create
that? And I think most people don’t know about that film, but when people
see it, it’s another three-minute thing. It’s just a little more
– it’s more fun. And it belongs to – all of those films belong
to the school, but the school never gave me an updated version. And I think
it actually has been translated and gotten used. But that’s one that I
really liked a lot.

MS. CORDOVA: Which section did you pick of the book?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: I think it was just pulling different elements, because
it could only be three minutes, but it’s about coming back home, that
whole sense of, you know – and being a wild woman like my grandmother,
all that sort of stuff. And I translated it, so it’s all in Spanish. So
what’s not translated is going back to the English. And I had nothing
to do with the credits. But I told Sandra, you know, I used your language, and
I told Anzaldúa. But, you know, it’s not there within the credits
for anybody because somebody else did the credits for us.

So that was the first film, and within that first year, within that year and
a half, basically, I came out to everybody in Cuba. I challenged the Cuban –
the Cine Latino Americano, because the films that I got to see at the 10th anniversary
of the film festival, you know, I mean, is an amazing you know, two weeks worth
of film screenings, but, you know, the best works of Latin America, and my sense
of, okay, this is where the revolution is happening, not only Cuba, but these
are Nuevo Cine Latino Americano, right?

So I challenged that if it’s Nuevo Cine Latino Americano, why are we
also being homophobic and racist and sexist? And it was just kind of going to
that, seeing film after film after film, and the film that won that year was
from Argentina, called La Peticular del Rey, and it was, you know,
just a comedy of someone making a film, but it was super-homophobic; it was
just a whole bunch of stereotypes, and people liked it. And so I was really
upset.

So I kind of – given my fear of speaking and because Spanish was still
just something I was really practicing, although I grew up with it – by
this time, of course, I had been in Cuba for a year so I felt strong enough,
but I had to write it, and probably the last day, I kind of said, you know,
and “As a lesbian, blah, blah, blah, blah,” you know. And some people
from the film school, some of my classmates, were really upset that I had come
out, and why should I have – why did I come out? That wasn’t important,
and I just thought that I didn’t have a sense of humor, you know, because
that film was funny so don’t I have a sense of that?

And I remember Canadian films also were highlighted that year, and I said,
“Look, there’s another film” – I said, “This other
film that’s from Canada is just really beautiful, and it talks about all
these different things, and it’s funny, but it’s sensitive and it
doesn’t play off of homophobia.” And they were like, yeah, okay.
But I remember lots of students stopped talking to me after that, and other
people just came up and were really excited about what I had to put out there.

And I don’t know how it gets written up in the history books, because
I know that year I had also done the film by that time, No Porque lo Diga,
Fidel Castro, and they showed it early in the morning. But they screened
it, and they showed it when people really couldn’t see it, so I was a
little upset. But I knew years before – because some of the research I
had to do was kind of going back – this was before Internet and all that
sort of stuff, so I was reading whatever I could read within Cuban files, and
just hearing people’s stories that once upon a time, maybe five or 10
years before that, some other filmmakers from the United States had gone in
to do research on gays in Cuba, and how people within the film industry were
upset because – I guess that’s a big conference and then the film
festival happened, so lots of people asked a lot of questions that they probably
shouldn’t ask, or should be asked but, you know, it just kind of makes
people a little crazy. So my coming out at that point kind of becomes another
moment of, you know, dealing with the homophobia – not, again, of Cuba,
but of all of Latin America, you know, for me. And when I made the film about
gays in Cuba, it was also to counter – [inaudible] – Mendoza’s
film.

MS. CORDOVA: Oh. Okay.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah. Or to question it, because I know that I didn’t
want to see it because I knew he was anti-Cuba and anti-Castro, so part of it’s
like, well, let’s see what that reality is; is it really any more homophobic
than any place else? You know, is Castro pushing and promoting a law or a whole
– go ahead.

MS. CORDOVA: That was the documentary that was sort of about – I think
it featured, like Reynaldo Arenas [Tupac Amaru, 1984]? Am I thinking
of the correct film?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah. It was a documentary, and I can’t think of
the name of it right now.

MS. CORDOVA: I can’t either.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah.

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.] Yeah, but very negative about how Cuba was dealing
with gays and lesbians, or if even lesbians were featured in the film.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Right.

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.] I think – so you were partly responding to that.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yes, very much so. And I hadn’t seen the film when
I was – you know, I guess I had to see it, and I found the film in Cuba,
so friends in Cuba had a copy of it so I got to see that. And I don’t
know that I succeeded in telling the story that I wanted to tell, because again,
it could only be 13 minutes long and I had shot a lot of other film –
I mean a lot of other hours. And I always wanted to continue to make a bigger
piece, but then somebody else did something focusing on Cuba, so –

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: But I mean, I guess I got to be there a year and a half.
So what I – it was that experience that kind of made me say, you know
what, it’s not any different in San Antonio. As a matter of fact, I saw
more people out in Havana than I saw in San Antonio, and to this day, you know,
20 years later – I mean, the way I was able to approach people was, you
know, there were – they didn’t have gay bars but they had teahouses,
and they still – I don’t know if you know – so that’s
where you go. The Coppelia, which is where – the big ice cream parlor
in central Havana is – you know, everybody gets ice cream. But, you know,
after 10:00 it becomes the gay scene, right, on any day of the week, but especially
on weekends. So there – you know, if you looked you would see it. And
people who were, you know, out there cruising – they’re cruising,
and it was up and down, the Coppelia to another teahouse that people would walk
up and down, and you would find other groups of people just hanging, and it’s
not like, you know, anything different than, say, a gay bar. And they knew each
other and they talk to each other and it’s a place to hang out.

But I would be catching a bus, and I remember once catching a bus to try to
go and visit somebody and I saw a lesbian couple holding hands. And one was
very, you know, butch and the other was real femme, and you know – so
they weren’t hiding at all, you know. And you know, they jumped off this
bus and I jumped out after them, and they were holding hands as they walked
down the street, and I thought, this didn’t happen in San Antonio. This
was 1987, ‘88, you know, and that wouldn’t happen in San Antonio.
Maybe now it’s happening, but I still don’t see it just downtown
in San Antonio, and that’s where they were.

And that’s how I jumped on the bus, that’s how I jumped off the
bus, and that’s how I just kind of went up to them and said, “Can
I tell your story?” They ended up not – this one couple ended up
just not doing that, but, you know, again, I was able to find other couples.
And there were certain sections within the, the beach where gay men hung out
and lesbians, you know. And there were just people within the community that
kind of told their story. And everybody was afraid, to be on camera, so I kind
of had to take care of that – because there is a history. I mean, so that’s
not to say that there wasn’t the history. And so I wasn’t about
denying that. But at that moment, you know, it seemed like people were at least
open about talking.

And nobody – I know that’s where one of the women said, you know,
yeah – there’s “No Porque lo Diga, Fidel Castro.” It’s
like, he’s not dictating this. It’s just because we’re –
you know, were raised in a Catholic, you know, Latino country that has this,
you know – that’s how we’re socialized, you know, but not
because of Fidel Castro, you know? And that they were just real clear, you know,
about it. And I think several people that I spoke to said that. I mean, I’m
sure, again, I probably could have talked to a lot of other people who might
have said, well, it’s all Fidel. But I saw that in general like people
that were 30 years and younger who were more – less connected to the revolution
were just going to be blaming Fidel in general about all their economic problems.
I mean, and that was really – it hurt the economy more so than, you know,
their sexuality because, again, the economy just didn’t allow them to
also have a home of their own. So you know, that’s how, therefore, you
couldn’t necessarily go – there’s already people – you
know, have a place for their own, you know, loving and all that sort of stuff.

But you know – but again, I was seeing the economy changing while I
was there, because the Soviets pulled out, because the U.S. invaded Panama.
And I was – you know, it was the worst place to live because you could
– for me, having been raised in the U.S. – to be in Cuba –
you know, just seeing nothing. And you know, I mean, again, seeing all the luxuries
that we live off of here and then going to this country that, you know, barely
has anything and then, you know, especially the war on Panama. Then –
I mean, at least Cuba had relationships with Panama. And then once that got
cut off by the U.S., you know, they couldn’t access – you know,
all of a sudden as film students we had less access to videos, we had less access
to just all – you know, so it’s a great idea to have this film school,
but if you can’t access anything – so friends of ours were, you
know, shipping in videos from the U.S., you know, through the consulates and
stuff like that. But, you know, everybody was struggling, you know – what
to eat, you know, people were starting to get sick. And I left and it got worse,
you know, in Cuba. But it was basically somebody – another friend of mind
has, like, talked about, you know, “If you’re bad, you know, and
you don’t go to hell, you go to Cuba” – [laughs] – because
– so you’ve got to be a good kid. [Laughs.]

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.] Have you been back?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: No, I haven’t had a chance. This job just keeps
me – because I want to go back for more than like a week. And usually
I want to stay – let me go back for the film festival because that’s
a good time to go. But December is when it happens, and every part of the year’s
always hard for me but if it had been December, right around the holidays, then
that’s easier. But December – early December’s just hard for
me to get away. So I just never have.

And now I know – with the new policies of the Bush administration, I
know people that were planning to go from Global Exchange and other places who
were just having it really hard, and so we have – you know, but I think
you can still go in as a visitor, as a tourist, through Mexico and stuff like
that.

MS. CORDOVA: Did you have any trouble getting to Cuba back home?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: No, and it was funny because I also didn’t hide
that I was going. And I remember somebody said – maybe it was my mom said,
“You know, just write to the congressman, Henry B. Gonzalez, and let him
know you’re going so in case you have any problems, you know, he knows.”
So I wrote him a note. And, you know, he probably went to visit also, yeah,
with my mother. I don’t think I met with him but I did get to meet with
his secretary.

And then when I was going, you know, then I had loans to pay up, and so I
remember writing to, you know, the different, you know, departments of the Treasury
or something because they were loans from the government, and saying –
and there were two loans. And one of the government loans like this accepted
a defer because I was going back to school in Cuba, and the other one didn’t
accept it. And so when I came back I had to deal with the one that had gone
bad, but the other one was, you know, right on. [Laughs.] So it was really funny,
so I didn’t hide that, you know.

And – but when I came back from the film school – I came back
twice, and the time I was just coming back I remember getting a red folder when
I got into the San Antonio airport. It was like everybody else got, you know,
another – didn’t get a folder or whatever, but I got the red folder.
And –

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: And so I was set aside and –

MS. CORDOVA: Red. [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: – and dragged all this stuff. I was pushed aside.
And I thought – again, not knowing – it’s not as sophisticated
as it is now. That’s, what, 17 years ago, but they knew enough to have
tracked me just to – held and asked a lot of questions. And the way I
kind of talked myself out of it was I had put some stuff out – you know,
like Robert Redford had gone to the film school, and all these other filmmakers
had but recently Robert Redford had been there. And so the Mexican newspaper
that I had had a story of Robert Redford being in there, so I kind of pulled
out that article –

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: – and said, well, you know, I was just here, and
that’s, you know, Robert Redford. And so the local immigration people
just kind of let me go. But, you know – but I was also probably, you know,
walking in with Cuban cigars, which I shouldn’t have. [Laughs.]

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: So that was really my concern – one of many. [Laughs.]
But I do remember the red folder, yeah.

MS. CORDOVA: And so what was it like to come back to San Antonio after all
that time in Cuba?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, I think what people remember me having the most
fun at was going to the supermarket –

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: – and kind of had so many choices. And I went, coffee?
Can I – it was like just one brand, it’s like, oh, my god, I could
have this or this or – you know. So I was just overwhelmed by the choices
I had, I mean, because, again, over there I had dollars, unlike everybody else,
and of course we aren’t supposed to spend dollars, but I – you know,
we also had pesos, so I could spend the pesos to do – you know, get whatever,
but the dollars I could go to the diplomatic store, and I bought my bran. You
know, I bought really old – you know, whatever they had in terms of raisin
bran or whatever, but that was going to help my digestion in Cuba, because it
was just – you know, there wasn’t enough – you know, there
was never lettuce. There was, you know – you know, the apples really looked
sickly, you know. And I was so used to those prime red apples. And, you know,
I just remember at the end just eating a lot of rice and beans and ice cream.
Like I ate a lot of ice cream because I had – you know, I couldn’t
eat some of that food. So coming back, it was like, wow, all this food that
I have choices with.

But on the other hand, it was like, when I was in Cuba, I had all the health
care I wanted, right? So I would visit the doctor on a weekly basis, all preventive
sort of stuff. You know, I remember walking in and always checking my weight,
you know. I was only 105 pounds – thin, but, you know, it was like, oh,
I need a massage, and they would give me a massage. Oh, can I check my eyes?
And it wasn’t just me. And I was picking it up because all my other friends
were going to the doctor. But they were coming from countries that had less,
right? And so everybody would go to Cuba. I would hear about so many people
from Venezuela and from Colombia and [End of Tape 2] – go to Cuba, I would
hear about so many people from Venezuela and from Colombia and places like that
going to Cuba to get the best heath care. And so – because they were all
going to see the doctors, I thought, well, I’m going to see the doctors
too, but it’s like, again, checking how he’s doing massage, things
that were all preventative, not for any sort of relief and then coming back
here saying, oh, I don’t have any healthcare again and I didn’t
have healthcare for another 15 years probably, or so. And so, I remember talking
to the doctor about AIDS because I know that Cuba was being attacked for their
homophobic stance on AIDS and their keeping the AIDS population in a section
of the island, and the doctor sitting with me. So I could go up to that same
doctor at the school and say, what’s up, and he’s like, well, let’s
understand this: this is our policy and it’s not just about AIDS. When
we’ve had other diseases that could wipe out the island we’ve done
this. And he talked about different moments in their history where the same
sort of isolation happened, and then he also said, besides, we’ve been
trying to get to these conferences in New York and the U.S. won’t give
us visas so we can go to the World Health Organization, the conference on AIDS,
and they were denied visas. So it’s like, how can we be sensitive if the
U.S. is also denying us the right to be there?

But ultimately there’s a sense of an island that I hadn’t really
thought about, and that he took it within that context. Again, did homophobia
play a part in it? Possibly, but also I could just understand the politics of
you don’t want to wipe out your whole community.

MS. CORDOVA: And in terms of – what was San Antonio’s response
to AIDS? What was the – how did the city respond? Was there any sense
–

MS. SÁNCHEZ: I know that when I – it must have been right after
that, yeah, coming back and there was a lot of work being done around AIDS and
I know that a group of us went to visit with the mayor at that time, and part
of my interest was to say, it’s going to affect women of color –
straight women of color in particular. “You have to do something about
it.” And the mayor saying, are you crazy? This is a gay man’s disease.
I’m here sitting with you is gay people so that’s what it is. I
said, don’t you understand, though, that straight men also have sex with
men and other people, and not just the sex workers that are women but with men,
and then they come back home and then they have relations with their wives?
And he just laughed at me and he laughed at all of us.

So we were – and I remember talking to a lot of the PR companies because
San Antonio had national money to dole out and preventative stuff around AIDS,
and we talked to them and said, it’s not just a white gay man’s
disease. There are gay men that are Latinos and you have to talk about it. So
we were doing a lot of that sort of – trying to prevent and trying to
teach people, and they basically ignored us.

So, again, who’s homophobia? So all kept on doing is saying, well, is
it any different in Cuba than in San Antonio? I mean, and who has the highest
proportion 20 years later of AIDS in San Antonio? Straight Latina women, Chicana
women, which is what we said once upon a time. And I know that there was one
woman, a straight woman, who ended up doing a lot of work around AIDS and finding
herself dealing with her own homophobia and dealing with gay white men who didn’t
want her to get monies for Latina women, and she was really pissed off at them,
but also then living within the Latino community – they’re trying
to ignore that situation, and so frustrated.

Just within the last four or five months I got a call from a person that lives
in the next-door – the community right next door, which is called Five
Points, and she was wanting support and contacts for it because they were trying
to fill homes for some women that had AIDS – some Latina women that had
AIDS, and there was a big push from other Latina women who said, no, they didn’t
want those houses built in the community because their kids were going to have
to play with the kids whose mothers were infected with AIDS, and so they were
going to – so they were already acting out, they were not letting their
kids play with the kids whose mothers had AIDS, and they were just being ugly
and mean – and she just wanted help. So they were fortunate there was
another group of women that were – you know, Latina women who headed con
SIDA or contra SIDA [Mujeres con SIDA o contra SIDA, Women With AIDS or Against
AIDS], I’m not sure which, and the woman in charge of that was in my high
school. She was about seven or eight years older but I was able to make contact
with her and then put them together.

But it was sad. You know, here it is 2004 and that was the call that I was
getting from a neighbor, and she was just really frustrated, and I said, whatever
we can do to help you, but here are the experts.

MS. CORDOVA: Did you start working with the Esperanza right when you came back?
Was that just an immediate thing?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, again, I left it – it should have kind of gotten
started and I never knew what position I would have except just to work, and
so when I came back, what had happened was Susan Guerra – had split town
and gone off to Norway because she just wanted her kids – her –
yeah, I guess she had two kids by then – to grow up in a better environment
than the United States, again, under the Reagan-Bush administration, which did
not seem good for her kids, she thought it was very volatile and her husband
at that time was – the housing industry had gone down and he was a foreman
for one of the housing – so it was just bad economically for them so they
left. And then another board member, Carol Rodriguez, had taken over for about
six months and was getting paid a small stipend and then just kind of said maybe
it was too hard for her. So I came back in September of ‘88 and nobody
was ready to take it on, so it was just like, well, I guess it’s my turn
or it’s going to die. So people – for the history people just assumed
I was the only director, and I said, no, actually there was a year and a half
of two other people. They kind of felt that I’d been the one that stuck
with it.

And so I wanted to do it; I wanted to work here before I went to Cuba. And
basically there was a budget of nothing and then Gloria was able to write that
first grant to Genevieve Vaughn [Foundation for a Compassionate Society] out
of Austin and get $6,000. And so that was the second year that we had $6,000,
and that paid partly for my work and partly for whatever else we did, and then
I just started learning how to write grants, I started learning how to do everything
that it means to run an organization, and kind of looking back at what Carol
and what Susan had done to see what I needed to learn, but just learning as
I went along, asking everybody for help.

MS. CORDOVA: What was your first major project, or what was your first goal?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, I remember even from Cuba talking to Gloria, and
there was an all-women’s band, and she said, well, they’re coming
through town and they’re going to be in Austin. Should we – and
I said, bring them. They’re important. You can’t say no to them.
And so I know those sorts of things were kind of happening.

But like a project – I know that people just wanted a mural and so we
did the children’s mural by December of ‘88, I guess. That’s
enough to do in December in terms of a project per se. I know that, again, I
was just trying to – within the first few months I was just trying to
figure out what had gone on before. We didn’t have a newsletter but within
that timeframe I think the Interchange Network, which had been the umbrella
for the Esperanza, was ready to fold.

MS. CORDOVA: What was the – not to throw you off track of the mural project,
but what was the Interchange?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: The Interchange Network was a group of social, environmental,
economic, justice organizations that basically created a 501[c][3] and it was
essentially very white with a few people of color organizations, and it was
a project – I think Cindy Duda [ph], who was a teacher in the local high
school and also was teaching classes at Incarnate Word maybe in the Peace studies
graduate program. That probably had to start as a project, so we kind of did
the newsletter called The Interchange. And they were meeting in different
places but I know that there was also a headquarters with St. Paul’s Square.
There was one of the board members of the Esperanza who was a board member of
Interchange named Judy Wade. Her husband was a doctor and so he had his office
in another little restaurant, so that was a place I think that I also found,
when we would go there to eat, that we’d find this one-page newsletter,
front and back, and they’d talk about different things going on in the
community. So for someone like myself to be able to say, oh, here are some like-minded
people doing work on Central America and women’s issues and anti-war.
You could find it in this one-page newsletter.

So the Interchange was that network of people but they only met like a couple
of times a year as a group but they put out this newsletter. And then so we
went to them as – Susan and I to ask them to umbrella us because they
had a 501[c][3], so it started the project, and they agreed to that. And so
here were two Latinos going to basically a white organization to ask them to
umbrella us. And then they did and then they basically stepped away and said,
here’s our 501[c][3], and then a few months later, or six months later
it was like, we’re not going to do a newsletter anymore – do you
want it? And so we did that but then we changed it to La Voz de Esperanza.

So, in hindsight I don’t think we really talked to them about it and
I know people got upset. I try to remember that history and let people know
that history because I don’t want that history to disappear, and I think
we’ve tried to keep whatever newsletters we had of theirs, and we have
their applying – 501[c][3] so we have all that paperwork, and then just
little by little everything that was Interchange became Esperanza because we
didn’t have to apply for our own 501[c][3]. So people come to me years
later and say, how do you apply for a 501[c][3] and it’s like, you know
what, I never did it.

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.] And also there was another group, Ellas. What was Ellas?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, Ellas became a statewide Latina Lesbian organization
that I helped kind of start but then I went to Cuba so never – so Gloria
and other Latina lesbians put it together. What had happened in ‘86 and
‘85 – again, because, as I mentioned, I did a lot of queer organizing,
and after my bad relationship I’m wanting to kind of learn as much as
I could, and so I went – there was a Tejano gay conference. And it had
happened maybe once before, but there was one in Houston so I went to that and
there were only six Latinas within that conference and the rest were men. And
so of course I challenged the fact where were the women and I was one of their
voices from San Antonio, so they kind of respected the concerns that I had.
So one of the things they did was give me some money from their conference to
go to Los Angeles where we knew that the Latina lesbians in L.A. – or
in California were having gatherings and retreats.

So I went there and ran into friends again and like Luz – now I’m
just remembering – and just kind of saw what they were doing. And so then
I came back and called Gloria and Leti Gomez, who were both here in San Antonio,
about – and Gloria was my partner at that time – oh, maybe she wasn’t
my partner. I don’t know.

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: And then – I’m kind of stuck, I want to go
to Cuba, but somebody has to move this forward, will you move this forward,
and then Gloria really got Leti Gomez to support her on that, and then I went
away for a year and a half. And again, only through phone conversations or whatever,
but they basically did a lot of organizing and it came on a statewide level.

So it was an important organization because they also were able to find in
Houston a woman – I forget her name, but she ended up being the lead plaintiff
for the sodomy case – Morales – Linda Morales out of Houston –
Leti Gomez, who then goes out to be the first executive director of –
[inaudible] – a national organization. People like Dina Flores, who was
Gloria’s ex-partner and was living in San Antonio but they got involved
and now she’s partners with Cynthia Perez out of Las Manitas. And so they
all got involved – Liliana Wilson Grez, who is a Chilean. So all of these
people, they were really interested in making sure Dallas had a contact and
then – [inaudible] – but I know at least Houston and San Antonio,
Austin and Dallas were a little bit better. And so they kept together and they
had the first statewide retreat in Stonehaven [Stonehaven Ranch, San Marcos,
Texas] through Gen [Genevieve Vaughn] who – gave us the space.

And when I came back from Cuba I got to attend that first conference, and it
was hard for me because it was like, oh, it was my – somehow it had been
my idea or my push to get some people to do that and then when I was there it
was like I was nobody. [Laughs.] They knew who I was on some level. So I remember
crying a little bit at that first meeting. It was like, okay, it’s okay.
And then they had a second year and maybe a third year, I don’t know,
but I know that the white lesbians got really envious and said, you know, these
Latino lesbians are having – one so that’s when the Texas lesbian
conference happened so they need to have a statewide conference for white women.
Well, they didn’t say for white women, just for lesbians in general, but
their first conference in Dallas was, again, less than 10 women of color.

MS. CORDOVA: But you guys set the precedent.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yes we had sent the precedent – and I think part
of that struggle was that some of the Latino lesbians have white lovers, so
it was also like – and the women – the Latino lesbians basically
said, it’s exclusive to Latinas, and I think that maybe they might have
had some little reception or gathering one day for the white – [inaudible]
– but it was only like two or three; it wasn’t a whole bunch of
people but that struggled there.

And so, unfortunately what happened there, again, everybody moves on, so Leti
went on to D.C. and did the Sodomy case. So everybody kind of went back to their
local organizing, and when Gloria gave up and gave it to other people locally,
then they just kind of took it onto the social level and it was a struggle.
That’s why, again, when I was trying to bring up Anzaldúa –
it was like, okay, here’s this political figure or this important writer,
and they were like, we just want to have fun. [Laughter.] You can have fun with
her. And then they ultimately just kind of let go of that project after four
or five years or something like that. Ellas kind of died down as a statewide
and then – but I know that in San Francisco pulls and it becomes Ellas
San Francisco. And Ella, again is “una de ellas” is “one of
them” type. And I think somebody wrote it within a poem or something that
– Marcia [sp] Gomez was also involved with that, and I know Marcia creates
the logo that has an indigenous mestiza – image with – [inaudible]
– again somebody wants to erase that.

The Ellas ends up going to the march on Washington in ‘87 and we have
photographs and I know some of those slides got lost, and there are a few slides
left that – like I videotaped some of the proceedings from that conference
as well, so there’s images there that nobody really kind of looked at
it, again, because tapes warp and all that sort of stuff. I think those sorts
of things – how can they all get digitized at least and not lost. So they’re
around here somewhere in Esperanza and I know people say, oh, these are a whole
bunch of video tapes. I don’t know who they belong to. I’m just
like leave them alone. They’re like – it says LLRC – Latino
lesbian retreat.

MS. CORDOVA: Well, with that I’m going to stop you because I need to
change out this tape, so we’ll take a little break. [Audio break.]

MS. CORDOVA: All right, we’re recording. This is Cary Cordova for the
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, interviewing Graciela Sánchez
on July 2nd, 2004. This is session two and disc two.

And, Graciela, you were just also – had just been mentioning about the
children’s mural and I guess how was that received in the community or
what was the process of creating that?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: I guess the reason we did the mural wasn’t necessarily
like my idea. It was just people in the community were really interested in
doing that and one of the first things I did was walk up and down the street
– Flores Street – a few blocks away from here and just asking for
permission because I think some people don’t like murals and part of it
is they think, again, it’s the imposition of whatever the image is onto
the community.

So everybody was really fine about it and – except for our next-door
neighbors who are restaurant owners and that’s because he’s just
a – he was just the mean man I think. He’s just a Scrooge sort of
character and he always was the cause of problems for a lot of programs that
we did while we were there.

And working – again, it’s how I’ve learned a lot of –
to do a lot of work is other people’s experiences, so the muralist that
we worked with –

MS. CORDOVA: Who was that?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: It was a community – Community Cultural Arts or something
like that. It doesn’t exist anymore, but they did all the murals in the
‘70s in the Casiano Homes, in that area. And a lot of those murals have
been destroyed because a lot of those buildings got torn down because they were
public housing. Those two individuals, Tache Torres and Juan Hernandez now work
for the department – for the Office of Cultural Affairs, and I went to
school with Juan, so I know him from first grade on, and Tache is a few years
older.

So it was – I guess when I found out Juan was working there and they
were interested in putting murals that we said, okay, let’s do it. And
they would provide the paint, they would provide just all the materials and
so we had to provide the youth, but working with Gloria and I think the board
of directors of the Esperanza has always had educators in it. I mean, how are
we to define educators, but these were actually people working within schools
from – like again Judy Wade who started in an alternative school called
the New Age School, which is now known as the Circle School and a lot of –
you know, like Susan Guerra had sent her kid there, so people looking for alternative
schools and people like Gloria and Laura Codina and just other board members
were working within the Edgewood school district and they were board members
of ours, so they were always working with children, so they were challenged
by the fact that the muralist wanted to just, you know, basically put up their
own image and then the kids would draw that. Right?

And so the first encounter was to say we want to create the imagery –
let the youth create the imagery and then you help us – and then they’ll
also draw back up on the border or whatever it needs to do, so essentially was
– I guess out theme was peace. What does peace mean, you know. Something
like that. And then, again, the struggle became talking to the different districts
or principals and the principals said it has to be a district policy. If the
district says yes, then we’ll go ahead and – you know, and writing
to the district who never paid attention to us or writing to principals that
– you know, so it was just like leave that alone and just go to the teachers
we know, so it was going to these teachers that we had in a different schools
who then we talked to and said can you present this project to the young kids?

And so we had from – I guess the youngest person was probably two years
old and then the oldest was 12, so it was just elementary school. And most of
them worked with their teachers and then Gloria and I’m not sure what
other person besides myself worked – who kind of defined some images that
were going to be selected. And then the muralist kind of – with their
experience – kind of then put it all – you know, flows right. So
for Gloria’s classes – you know, their answers were like, you know,
peace means that children can have homes or that candies would fall from the
sky so they could be eaten and be happy and the types of homes – you know,
she always was challenged that the kids would always draw homes that had little
triangular roofs and all that sort of stuff and they were living in the projects
that had flat roofs, so she challenged them to draw flat roofs and so –
and what she – and this is where I also noticed how great of a teacher
she was because we also were getting – and that art – her interest
in them being creative and drawing and water coloring was really important because
in the schools that had been kind of wiped out, but she made it part of her
work so that she worked with three, four, five-year-olds. You know, no older
than six years old because she only worked early childhood.

And we were getting stuff from fourth and fifth graders whose work was less
pronounced or whatever, so you could see kids as fourth graders doing stick
figures, but her kids were younger and doing things that were more elaborate
just because she was pushing them to do that.

However, we worked with the East Side Boys and Girls Club and so we were able
just to create this big mural and then we were able to find – like one
of our big finds was this guy named Vincent Valdez, who was one of the 12-year-olds
and his best friend was the son of one of our board members at that time, so
that’s how – and they all knew he was really interested in art,
so he came in and on his own he created basically the – then they were
all into little balloons I guess. I guess these were ideas of kids, right, so
the balloons floated around on the walls and so one of the balloons that’s
what he created was just like an environmental scene with a giraffe and just
very three-dimensional where everything else was more two-dimensional, and so
his kind of stuck out and we just – and he made – you know, and
we were able to get him then in to direct – contact with some of the muralists
themselves and one of them just continued to guide him and he ended up going
to a really important school and now he’s been bought you know, by people
like – well, just big Hollywood stars and he’s been so –

MS. CORDOVA: Was he in that Cheech Marin show?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: The Cheech Marin.

MS. CORDOVA: Oh, okay. Yeah.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: So we knew him as a 12-year-old and some people –
I mean, again, when they say –

MS. CORDOVA: That’s a great story.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah, and that he acknowledges that that was when –
that that connection connected into the larger community – I mean, I think
that’s what we do. A lot of the emerging artist is if we can’t just
work with them it’s – just connect, you know, to other people in
the community. I guess Barbara Renaud-Gonzalez was just saying – because
we were challenged by the funding this past year and our low scores and people
saying we have to act more like businesses and we’re saying we are very
much a business, but we – you know, the people in the community –
the leaders don’t understand that you have long-term effects on people
and how do they know, like myself, the fact that you are – that I work
for you – that I’m also – it gives me the luxury to get some
money and write and so I – you know, who knows what this piece will mean
when I finish writing my novel and how it will – you know, that it will
have had an impact on Sandra before Sandra was big. You all supported her and
nobody has a sense of what you all did for her and how that affects the larger
San Antonio community and we’re like yeah, because tourists come to visit
her house and that’s their big push. It’s tourism, tourism, tourism.

But so, you know, we kind of quietly just savored those moments that seem that
people have succeeded. We hope that some of these artists kind of – or
not just artists, just people who lead – again, if they become scholars
or they become just other activists or they just raise their kids a certain
way that what they’ve learned is having some impact on the larger society,
but maybe, you know, somewhere down the line it would be nice to hear, “Oh,
the Esperanza helped me here.”

I know one artist – what’s his name? Mondini – Franco Mondini-Ruiz
– yeah. He – when he was in the first show – it was our first
gay show, and he was Italian. You know, Mondini. And he was working as a lawyer
for USAA and he – so this was an important moment because he was coming
out and he was doing his artwork and years later he becomes selected to the
Whitney biennial and does that sort of work, and within his interview for the
local paper he does talk about the Esperanza, but I remember challenging him.
It was like you’re not Italian, you’re Mexicano. You have Italian
and Mexican – again, but at that point he was there and so you just see
that transformation on their own. They get to be – you know, because we’re
all – you know, we’re Spanish, we’re Italian. We’re
anything but Mexicanos.

And so he did a major transformation and he’s got a long way to go. Sometimes
I have to make sure to challenge myself to say, you know, people can move. You
know, don’t remember them just as – but because they also get angry
when you challenge them too, and sometimes – you know, it’s not
nice the way it comes back and so, you know.

MS. CORDOVA: Would that have been – I think I had that you – there
was a 1989 lesbian-gay art show. That was the one?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah.

MS. CORDOVA: Okay.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah, and I ended up fighting with David Zamora Casas also
because he was the curator and he walked in saying I want to do a human rights
exhibit and we had just done a human rights exhibit that dealt with Central
America’s struggle and so I said, are you talking about human rights or,
you know, are you wanting to do something else? Because we had just done the
first AIDS art show in the city of Santa Fe, also in ‘89.

Nobody would do a show on AIDS in San Antonio in ‘89, and so this artist
who happened to be a white Jewish woman had gone from different gallery to gallery
to see if somebody would show her work and we weren’t really doing a lot
of exhibits at that time. We were just starting to pick up on them and so we
had at least the luxury of having this space available, but I think what she
found was we were the only ones that were willing to deal with this taboo subject
and so a lot of people came to that and of course the media, the newspapers
just didn’t want calendar announcements, and then again it’s because
of the taboo subject, but also because the – the Esperanza promoted it
because once something happened, Blue Star, then it started and got a bigger
write up and, you know, that’s more of a white-centered organization.

And so he came into the space because of that AIDS exhibit and then wanted
this human rights. I said, well, let’s be honest. Are you wanting a lesbian-gay
art exhibit because we just had that human rights exhibit and it wasn’t
about Central American human rights. It was this big thing, so call it what
it is and if it’s going to be lesbian-gay, let’s do it. And people
have to be out and I just kind of gave him parameters of the majority should
be women of color, the majority should be people of color and those sorts of
things that were important to the Esperanza.

And I know that he was struggling finding women and so he even kind of cheated
and had his alter ego become one of the women and later on telling me and I
was just not happy, but at least they learned. And I know years later there
was a statewide exhibit of the – within the queer community and the artists
working from San Antonio challenged other artists in Texas as far as the queer
voice of color, you know, and where are the women’s voices also? And that
San Antonio was able to bring in a larger community of women and men of color
into those statewide exhibits in Houston, Dallas, and all those things just
being white gay men.

And so they say that and they were able to say, well, this is important so
they could understand. I also had some people that didn’t realize that
they were going to be out and maybe – again, so I told the story to the
curator. The curator then has to impart that information to those artists who
I didn’t actually know because I said, you know, we’ll have to put
their names and all that sort of stuff on invitations and put it out in the
newspaper and so sure enough one of the persons saw their name and was really
upset and to this day they still don’t talk to me, but everybody knows
he’s gay.

But it’s just – you know, and I get how does misogyny also play
into that because I know he’s been very pleasant with other people associated
with that exhibit that Graciela, you know, to hate her all the rest of my life
and I remember running into him in the store and saying let’s talk and
– “I’m not going to talk to you.” Little things like
that, but – and those are the struggles again. Those are the places. It’s
like you can’t just be gay and understand.

You have to understand what it means to – you know, how does sexism and
misogyny affect you as a gay man? You can’t do this to me as a woman when
you’re being attacked for being too much like a woman and people, society,
the patriarchy hates woman, you know. And as you are aligned with women, you
too – you know, that’s why they hate queer and gay, right? So understand
that, but if people don’t want to talk we can’t do that, and it’s
not just about talking. It’s like how do we have the programs? How do
we have the classes? How do we have whatever that teaches people to get to that
understanding because – and I guess that’s been the struggle.

It’s like we have so much work to do in the community that – you
know, again, I’d love to teach a class on all these different things that
I have learned. I would like to work with some of the young people that would
come through the space, and usually, again, it’s finding someone else
to do that and yet I have all these experiences that they don’t have,
so they’re never necessarily teaching what I want to teach, but I don’t
have the opportunity to do that either.

So if I had a chance, it’s like I want somebody else to write the grants.
I want somebody else to administer this space. I want somebody else to take
care of the building. It’s falling apart. But those are the things nobody
wants to do, so that’s the place that they’re – like, I want
to work with the artists. I’ll help create the exhibit. I’ll help
do this other stuff. Well, everybody wants to do that. That’s fun, you
know?

MS. CORDOVA: And did sort of – was the film festival a natural outgrowth
of these exhibits or how did the film festival emerge and when exactly?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: We – because of my interest in film, we were always
showing films before there was any film festival, so we started showing films
just on our own and then collaborating, say, with the Guadalupe Cultural Arts
Center. At that time there was a film programmer named Yvette [Yvette Nieves-Cruz],
and he had a – [inaudible] – and part of her vision was to have
other institutions collaborating showing programs, so she said, look, here’s
some films about Latinas in Central and South America and dealing with these
issues around social justice and show them and then one time she said, oh, we
have this opportunity to show from by Marlon Riggs called Tongues Untied
and would you be willing to collaborate because you know the lesbian-gay community
and it’s going to be a – you know, it’s going to be shown
in Texas and we’re working with Southwest Media Project and I said, okay,
let’s do it.

So it was wonderful, right. We – the 1991 Gulf War started that same
day that we showed the film, so we only had 75 people show up to the Guadalupe,
but what we were told by the people in Houston was that that was the largest
crowd that showed up anywhere in the state of Texas. It was really sad for us
because we would have probably had that place filled, but so many of our people
– I mean, if I had been somewhere to see the film – you know, what
was going on on TV, I might have stayed home too, but because I was programming,
I didn’t have an idea the war had started.

And Marlon Riggs showed up, you know, so it was not only the showing his film,
but he was here, so – you know, and it was, again bringing in people like
my parents to see that film, right, but we also showed Ethnic Notions,
which is the stereotypes of black – you know, and so a lot within the
black community and some Latino members wanted to see that. And then Tongues
Untied on top of that was – some people walked away. Some people
stayed, but like that was a tremendous gift for us to collaborate with the Guadalupe
and again the film programmer wanted to do that. Later on, the director of the
organization said he didn’t want any of those collaborations, so we had
to stop it.

But what also happened was because we showed that film in San Antonio publicly
when the national broadcast was going forward, most cities pulled away and didn’t
show that film. We were able to go to the local PBS station and say we’ve
seen it. We like it, you know. We’ll be willing to bring you community
members who can – so we had this ongoing discussion and they showed it
in San Antonio. So Austin didn’t show it, Dallas didn’t show it.
Like we were the only city that originally broadcast it on its national air
date, and then maybe later on people showed it, but so again that – we
were able to influence that and that was really tremendous.

And it’s one of those great films also. You know, Marlon Riggs is one
of those people like – Anzaldúa – and all these people that
connect race, class, and sexuality in a really profound way and he’s a
Texas boy too and nobody knew that, so when he died we were still – this
red space was still not painted so when we did a – [inaudible] –
for him and painted onto the walls and I think if you go – you know, we
were able to still kind of honor him.

So we were showing that and a lot of, again, the programming for us was what
was important was how these films – how these artists of any – you
know, how these writers, these thinkers, these academics – whoever is
out there, these activists can connect all these issues together, so it can’t
just be a Chicano from the ‘60s and ‘70s coming in and telling his
struggle, because that’s what it would be – a he – a straight
man, right? Talking about that – how do we bring in someone that can talk
about these multiple issues and really challenge.

And it also allowed us to bring in those diverse audiences, right, so Ethnic
Notions did bring in the straight black community, but then the queer community
got to come in because they were interested and so all of a sudden Latinos and
whites could also come in. So that show we showed strawberries – Fresas
y Chocolate. We showed films on La Peor de Todas about Sor Juana
Ines and so there were a lot of people interested in her literature, interested
in women, interested in Latinos, so you get these multiple communities coming
together. We brought in people like Margaret – I’m forgetting her
name. Who was the one that wrote Cuban Women – Margaret Randall.

MS. CORDOVA: Oh, right.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: You know, white woman. Why would we bring her? Well, because
she had just done something on – I mean, again, her Central American and
South – and Cuban – life – her work around as a lesbian, as
a writer, as an incest survivor. You know, and that was one of the earlier things
and somebody – the wife of the editor of the newspaper at that time –
[inaudible] – was her last name, she was a friend of hers and she said,
I’ll pay for her to stay. I’ll pay – but for us it wasn’t
just accepted, it’s to say how does it connect to all these issues, and
that was like, again, ‘88, ‘89, somewhere there.

But it was a good way to start thinking of who we program and how we bring
people out there, and so – I mean, we didn’t have a space at that
time. I know we had to use our space at the Esperanza – the old Esperanza
was just – you know, only allowed for 60 people so we had to rent out
or try to do it as cheaply as possible in these other places, but sure enough
we were always able to fill the space. It was like 200 people. Okay, we’re
going to fill it out, and we did. And that’s always been important to
me too because so much of my time I would go to see the Guadalupe Film Festival,
or anywhere else go into a room and there are four people and two of them are
the filmmakers and two of them are people in the community and it was like –
or go to the Carver [sp] and see a mainly white audience of 20 people seeing
John O’Neal and his work around the South and storytellers and it was
like, you know, if people aren’t going to pay then give away the tickets.
If people aren’t going to come into the institution, then have it outside.

So we – because we were showing a lot of these films, we actually started
with the other American film festival – films made by and about the “Other
America,” which weren’t racist, sexist, and homophobic. Because,
again, I was seeing films from the Cuban experience to the ones that I’ve
seen here – it’s like it wasn’t enough to see Latino films
if they were continuing to promote stereotypes and hateful language and whatever,
and a lot of this was anti-woman and a lot of this was anti-other people of
color and I saw that within – I remember being at the film festival at
the Guadalupe once and all these women came up to me and said, do something
about this – one of these films – it’s horrible, it needs
to stop. And it was actually a Latino comedy group that was there kind of subtitling
imagery of Asian – of an Asian film, so as they were saying something,
they were translating and they were translating in a really horrible way, and
people laughed, right?

And I hated that, and so I hated it. I was basically not watching it and that’s
why people came to me, but it’s like I don’t work at the Guadalupe.
I can’t do this for you, but I’m willing to go with you as a group
to stop the film from screening, but so many times it’s like you do something
or sour grapes. It’s like Graciela, there are grapes. Let’s get
rid of the grapes. It’s like why don’t you get rid of some grapes
or else I’ll stand with you and we’ll all go and get grapes. And
I know I’ve done at least the communal grabbing of grapes and dumping
them in the trash, you know, at conferences and stuff like that. But, you know,
it’s like do it. I said, okay, no, let’s do it.

And so anyway, just the films being – so when we did “Other America”
we said no. And again, it was like looking to the stars also. It was like they’re
doing films; we can do it. And we – I had just seen City of Hope,
which is a film by John Sayles, and at the bottom at the credits it said, you
know, an Esperanza production. And I’m like, oh, let’s bring him
and he had done Liliana. He had done so many films and I had seen,
I guess, Brother from Another Planet and it was a little older then,
but kind of showed Brother and City of Hope at that time,
not knowing that he was working on Lonestar, okay? Which I didn’t
like all that much compared to other films. Maybe, again, because it’s
so much closer you know the real stories.

But calling up whoever was finding City of Hope, finding that Esperanza
productions – calling up and saying, do you want to come to San Antonio
and him saying yes. You know, it was like you can’t say – [laughter]
– and then my first staff person still works for him basically and she
lives out of Austin unless she’s in Mexico, but I developed, again, the
relationship and then when they come through it’s like, okay, somebody
else has to kind of really deal day in and day out with them, and so what was
smart about her was that she maintained that relationship and continued.

And he’s – when he came out with Men with Guns, we were
able to show that and do it as a fundraiser as well, but what he would –
I think he was coming to his interest in Texas was because he was doing this
film screening – doing film research for Lonestar, but –
which he never told us about. I mean, I think while he was here was when we
found out, but he – what he told us he did appreciate was that we wanted
to show the films like out in the basketball courts. You know, let the sun come
down and then pull out the screens and have the kids that were playing basketball
sit around as audience and have people within the projects come out, so that’s
what we did for the Wheatley courts; that’s what we did at the Alazan
courts.

And with the Alazan, which were like two blocks away from the Guadalupe, it
was also about saying you’re in the community, you don’t go to the
Guadalupe. Let us give you free tickets to get you from – you know, you
come to the Alazan to see these films, now in the next three days there will
be films in this institution that’s yours. Use it. Go there.

But again, we forget, as people who run these institutions, that people become
afraid of spaces because they don’t feel they belong and so it’s
always about trying to tear down those divisions amongst ourselves and also
to acknowledge that those realities happen, and that it happens here in the
space too. I mean, my friends from high school – I get upset because they
know I do this work, but they don’t always come here and I’m always
like you’ll really like this, but it’s not about not wanting to
do that. It’s just maybe how comfortable do they feel in this space. So
then I’m trying to figure out ways for people to feel comfortable and
so that was what we were trying to do to support the Guadalupe. Not to damn
the Guadalupe as much as to support them, but also to challenge ourselves.

And it’s hard. It’s not easy just doing – I mean, we almost
had a riot at the Alazan because we didn’t realize that the housing authority
put us there without telling us that they were having problems as the housing
authority with the community, so when they saw that the Esperanza was collaborating
with the housing authority to put the films, their parents kind of shoved kids
onto us and the kids basically were just causing a lot of problems, so it wasn’t
a necessarily good moment. Of course, at the Wheatley courts that moment was
really nice.

And, again, we showed Brother from Another Planet there, but we also
showed an animated piece on the making of tortillas, right? It was a fun kids’
film, but – and we know that, again, everybody says east side is black.
Well, the majority of the people that live on the east side are Chicanos actually
now, because, again, the population – how do you have 60 percent Chicanos
and 6 percent black people even in the largest population of the east side with
– you know, blacks only comprise probably 40 percent and Chicanos the
other 60 percent.

And there’s a lot of tension between blacks and Latinos still and we’re
trying to always bridge those divides. So then within the “Other America”
film festival we were also showing queer films, so for instance Fresas y
Chocolate comes out of the “Other America,” not “Out
at the Movies.” Sort of Buena and all those films, you know, and for me
I was like if that’s queer programming we’re showing, there’s
“Other America,” but we – Esperanza was also collaborating
with other people within the gay community who become my friends. You know,
Dennis Poplin, who ends up basically organizing “Out at the Movies”
and he’s – he, along with myself and Gloria and Michael Marinez
and Steve Bailey and a couple of other – [inaudible] – and Martha
Prentiss and, you know, half of us are white, or half of them are white and
half of us are people of color, but our politics are progressive to lefty compared
to everybody else and we helped organize the lesbian-gay media project.

So I’m part of that, but also at the same time I’m not the curator
of that film festival. They do “Out at the Movies” and the Esperanza
collaborates to do “Out at the Movies” with them, so – because
there is no full-time staff. It’s just the group of volunteers and we
like the – and again, as Esperanza pushed that the films – you know,
how do you find queer films made by people of color – you know, made with
focus of people of color also, so when you compare it to, say, the programming
of “Out at the Movies” compared to other LGBT film festivals, we
had the majority of people of color or majority of women, or we try, you know,
even if we didn’t reach the majority it was always looking for those films,
and if – you know, around Asian films we didn’t find them –
except the films made in China and Taiwan and all these other places and just
trying to do that, but then looking for Chicano-made films usually as well from
California and things like that.

So it’s nice to, you know, again have those influences amongst other
people we’ve worked with and so, yeah, it was a collaboration and “Other
America” was totally ours. “Out at the Movies” was a collaboration.

MS. CORDOVA: Okay, and then was – how did the idea for Mujer Artes start?
How did –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Mujer Artes and the youth media project come to be because
– well, especially Mujer Artes I think we were – again, what’s
a long term? How do we do long-term work, you know? These moments of people
coming together and identifying and seeing again people who present something.
It lasts for two hours and if you come over and over you have some sort of effect,
but again who is also coming to these programs? You know, even if they’re
working class and poor they film have had some exposure to something else and
then how do we have a deeper effect on a group of women that might not participate
in the process at the Esperanza, so while we were thinking the long-term effect
– and so we were also thinking that for young people, so we were showing
films, but how do we teach people to make films?

We’re showing women, but how are we really making either new women artists
and with this consciousness, so that happened, and I guess the Texas Commission
on the Arts was looking to do minority economic development, so we applied –
didn’t get funded. Then the City of San Antonio applied – had something
about let’s do specific projects with inner-city communities and so we
applied there and we were able to – you know, I mean, I think we were
dreaming.

It’s like, okay, we’ll do some sort of Cooperativa, but what’s
the discipline? And so talking to Michael and talking to Gloria and talking
to Magda Shillay [ph], it’s like our new head is – [inaudible] –
maybe clay and Michael has done – is like the visual artist on the board
of directors and so – one of them, but he’s the one that’s
been most integrated as a board member and so he really kind of said let’s
let them work with clay and so then we were able to find Marta Shell –
Magda McChesney who is now Shellay, but is Mexicana originally, born and raised
in Mexico and we were interested in having a Latina.

And that became the first problem was like who were the Latina women who were
in pottery and we really saw that in San Antonio most people who work in pottery
are white men – not even white women; white men. [Laughs.] And so at least
we found – [inaudible] – who took the first year women through and
then just – again, she’s a working artist, so she didn’t want
to give up too much time, so then she just kind of left the program.

We were also doing the peace market – the Mercado de Paz – since
‘88 or ‘89, so we – and part of our work was not just having
other people sell the works of people from third world countries, but to actually
have some of those artists come in, so in ‘94 we had three different artists
from Mexico: Veronica Castillo, from Puebla who was at that time probably 24,
and then two other – one other potter from Oaxaca and another –
and somebody who worked in wood from Oaxaca. So they came up and our relationship
continued with Veronica and so we – once we lost her, we said, you know,
do you want to come up? And she was in this midst of her life of like I can
go fight with the Zapatistas, I could go to Germany, or I could come to San
Antonio, and so her mom liked the San Antonio bit better. [Laughter.]

MS. CORDOVA: I bet.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: And she seemed to like it too, so she came and she just
came for months at a time and then she was – continued to be the main
– our artist in residence I guess for about six or seven years, and she’s
just recently – this is the first year that the women of Mujer Artes–
haven’t had any artists outside that just comes and stays with them for
a while.

And I think it’s a good time – I mean, so Veronica was ready to
move on and now she’s going to start a school to teach young kids from
Mexico, and maybe from Puebla, themselves who are out on the street –
street kids, right – to learn something and so she’s going to teach
that, so based on her experience here she’s actually teaching in Kingsville
this semester because she made contact with Santa Barraza and of course –
I mean, my struggle with Mexicano artists or any internationalists is that usually
they’re well known. The big museums, the big universities can bring them
up and so they can pay them a lot and I remember Veronica was paid $500 to basically
be a little – you know, brown little woman sculpting at the museum, like
museums do really well until they pay $500 for one or two hours worth of work
and her turning around saying, well, they paid me $500. You can pay me.

And it was like, no, and then having to explain what a Chicana, a Chicano is,
what community-based organizations are like versus the white, European-centered
institutions – how they have money. And that’s taken a long time
for her to understand, right? And for her even to understand what it means to
work with Chicanas because Mujer Artes has been a mixture of women born and
raised in Mexico and coming here and then Chicanas, right, and she, as a very
well grounded Mexicana – you know, not understanding that they don’t
– you know, they don’t know where Las Vegas is, you know. Like I
know where Las Vegas is. Why don’t they know? It’s like education,
you know, or like – and being real frustrated with their lack of desire
and passion that she would expect. It was like, well, they want to, but –
I mean, they transform and it’s not the same group of women, but they’re
– but there’s a core group that has now been together in about four
years and she was instrumental in working with all of them.

And now having taught one semester this summer in Kingsville, she – yes,
last Sunday she went by my parents and she said that the kids at Kingsville
are worse than the women in Mujer Artes. You know, she goes they don’t
even know if they’re Mexican or American or what they are and they don’t
want me to speak in Spanish and when I try to explain to them what a tree of
life was and then they all start yawning and – you know, so for me it
was good. It’s like, good, you have this experience. It’s not just
the women of Mujer Artes. Now you understand the struggle we have with Chicanos
and for her to kind of – again, it’s that experience because they
just feel like it’s that group of women or the Esperanza doesn’t
get what I’m trying to get. Now she’s seen them.

And she thought she was going to teach a class of advanced kids working in
clay, and what she found out was that most of the kids were just taking an easy
A sort of class, you know. It’s an art appreciation sort of class and
she only found that there were two kids that had – that were actually
art majors and even those two had never done work in clay, so she said she had
to do real sort of basic things with them, but just the struggle she had with
them.

So it was – again, for her to compare that to the Esperanza experience
was, I think, good because she was burned out by the time she left because she
just felt frustration and – you know, and again that it is hard –
I mean, but on some level it was Veronica, unlike some of my Chicano –
[inaudible] – that continue to come back year in and year out who work
with these women who are, again, with the media having found somebody that comes
back to work with a group of young people or anybody, right, to teach those
skills.

So now we have at least a really good project with Mujer Artes which I think
is kind of also a secret, you know, like people know about it, but they don’t
know about it. And nobody funds it either, right. I mean, we’ve applied
like from friends of folk art out of New Mexico, but the first struggle I have
to deal with is their racist understanding of what folk art is, right, so Chicanas
don’t fit and so – you know, and so their understanding of indigenous
culture through Hopi, Navajo, whatever, all that whole Southwest, they understand
it and we can – they can see that, you know, there have been 10 generations
of mothers passing it down and then they’re like, well, how does Veronica
Castillo from Puebla have anything to do with Chicanas in San Antonio? You know,
what does Puebla have to do with San Antonio? I was like, uh, mole, Cinco de
Mayo. [Laughter.]

You know, do you want me to be that – it’s just like – and
really struggling and trying to write about that and talking to people like
Antonia and saying this is constant, you know, and so they would – they
never funded Mujer Artes. The Ms. Foundation who wants to do stuff around business
don’t get art, right? So they’ll give me money to teach women to
get trained to open up a daycare and it’s like, well, we’re trying
to give women another alternative to being secretaries or being caretakers.
You know, can they be creative? And so they turned us down. And they’re
also about capitalism too, and ours is like we don’t want to teach these
women to just – you know, to make money and they can’t make it anyway.
You know, we can’t get enough money just to say here’s you’re
$1,000 salary and everything in addition to that. I mean, we always said can
there be a stipend that goes to them and then they make the rest of their work
in that – and so after like five or six years we were finally able to
get some stipends given to them. Actually, after we started getting city funding
again this past year.

MS. CORDOVA: And we – yeah, we have to touch on that topic I think. It’s
just so important and I want to include it. Did you have any indication prior
to – I guess there was a little bit of defunding in 1994, but did you
have any sense of the mass defunding that was to happen in 1997?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: No. I mean, I think I mentioned how, yeah, the attacks
were anti-affirmative action in ‘94, ‘95 – anti-inner city
focused work and again it was Mujer Artes and the youth program that got cut.
But as I think I mentioned also, that as – there was a lot of work being
done by these gay conservatives towards us, mainly one or two people and a lot
of faxing going on without us being anywhere – having any idea that this
was happening.

And I think allies just thought, you know, these are a bunch of crazy people.
Let’s just put them away and we don’t even have to bother to tell
the Esperanza or Graciela, but what happened was those gay conservative boys
aligned themselves with the right wing and that’s where the power came
and so – and that they work on homophobia to attack the Esperanza even
though I think politically it’s where the gay conservatives – you
know, these are lefties, these are Cuban – based – you know, they’re
Castro’s arm to cinematography of – you know, whatever, because
the films we show and all that sort of stuff they weren’t getting anywhere.
These are Marxist – I mean, we’ve got lots and lots of language.

MS. CORDOVA: You were accused of being pro-Castro.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Pro-Castro, pro-Marxist, post-structuralist – French
post-structuralist. [Laughter.] All this sort of language. You know, I was pro-graffiti,
and so I was just a bad influence. Me – again, I become the target but
there are all these other people associated with the Esperanza that they hate,
but it’s not until they align themselves with the gay – with the
anti-gay that they –

MS. CORDOVA: Right.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: – strike from that. And what also happens is there’s
a radio announcer that moves from North Carolina, Jessie Helms’ community,
to San Antonio: Adam McManus [AM-630 KSLR]. And he, even though he – it’s
a small radio program with a small listenership – probably no more than
300 people, but he’s able to rile up those 300 people to write letters
to the city council, to call, to do that. And those 200 or 300 voices made enough
of a difference to cut back the arts.

And we also had one councilmember, Robert Marbut, who was working against us
and against the arts in general unless they could prove that they brought in
tourists and so that was his big push with his conflict of interest is that
he also is promoting the sports foundation. He is on their board or a staff
person and the sports foundation is bringing in like the NCAA and wanting to
bring in the Pan-Am games and for them it’s tourists. It’s like
we’re bringing in tourists, so we should be able to get – have access
to this money. You can’t prove that you’re bringing in tourists,
so you should get no money.

And so he was getting extra money and giving it to his foundation and pushing
the agenda of tourism and the hotel and motel tax that funds the arts organizations
as we understand initially written was written to actually maintain local, authentic
culture as a way to, you know, challenge what can happen when tourism really
plays – and I think it’s because people living in communities of
color helped to define that language, but then there’s the lobbying interests
of the hotel community that says it has to be connected to the tourism because
we want to bring in more – you know, so show us the heads and beds and
then we’ll give you money.

And we’ve run into some of these lobbyists and challenged them with our
attorneys to say, no, you’re wrong and – but at that time within
two weeks basically we got defunded. We first found out – we received
a little flyer from one of our board members who is a – who was working
as a nurse practitioner and so I guess one of the members of the San Antonio
pro-life association is also working in the hospital, so handed her –
and it’s like, you know, defund the Esperanza, call this number, do this
and this and this.

And this board member – we had just gotten done with a major fundraiser
and so we were having a celebration thanking the 15 people who helped us and
so just kind of like, oh, here’s an aside. You know, here’s this
little flyer and it’s like, oh, my God. When did you get this and how
come you haven’t told us about it? It was like, oh, it’s nothing,
you know, because they didn’t think that it was going to turn out to be
what it was and so then we start making phone calls, getting people to say they
will help collaborate to try to stop it and, again, I think the homophobic has
played a big part, so a lot of people who should have spoken didn’t speak
and everybody just assumed that nothing drastic was going to happen and so we’re
all at city hall and we’re waiting to speak. We’re all signed up
and we had – actually, what happened was before they have the final decision
they have meetings –

MS. : I’m sorry. It’s your mom. Do you want me to take a message?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: I hope she doesn’t need me. [Laughter.] That –

MS. CORDOVA: Do you want to pause the tape at all?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: No, that’s okay.

MS. CORDOVA: Okay.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: I mean, if they do – she’ll knock again. That
we went to – what was happening was they were attacking public arts funding
too, right. And there was a whole big national article – New York Times
writes an article about what’s happening around the nation in the arts
in general and then they talk about in San Antonio they were attacking the public
– percept – for arts and so we knew – again, this is why I
wish people would remember the histories for themselves, you know.

It’s like Eduardo Diaz, who is the guy who gets me to Cuba who really
doesn’t – who loves the Esperanza initially and then gets scared
because we are in your face. You know, we can’t – like he would
go – I remember one year in ‘90 we showed films – or ‘91
– and he wrote an article as the executive director for the Office of
Cultural Affairs and said, you know, I went to this film festival in San Francisco
and gay films are – you know, there’s nothing bad about it, right.

But like two years later it’s like why are you showing those films? Because
we were – you know, we as well as others probably were causing him a lot
of pain and we don’t have a sense of all the attacks that he’s getting,
but when he’s getting attacked in ‘97 around the public –
percept – for art, it was like how can we help you? We’re going
to go here. We will just speak on behalf of all the arts organizations. And
we did and nobody else necessarily in the community because, again, we’re
not just about ourselves; we’re about the larger community, so the media
– the Lesbian and Gay Media Project goes, Jump Start goes, and Esperanza
goes to speak on behalf of all the arts organizations and that’s when
we hear Jack Finger, who is one of the right-wingers who goes off and spews
– and the Esperanza should be completely defunded because of their film
festival. And that’s his big push is – you know, Jack Finger, who
is still around and who works with us on some issues and doesn’t on some.

Anyway, and so that’s when we were really alerted and then add that to
the flyer and so we really started organizing and then we’d come to the
city council meeting. Oh, and at that first event, you know, the city council
members are not listening and it’s citizens to be heard, and I know that
I kind of stopped my conversation and say, please, council members, I’m
speaking and so is the rest of the community. Listen to me. And like I won’t
speak anymore until they paid attention to me and then I said the rest of my
speech and then afterwards people from Eduardo Diaz to his wife to – you
know, these are people who are good friends of mine – you know, it’s
like tell Dennis Poplin, who is the guy in charge of Media Project, he says
keep yourself away from the Esperanza. The Esperanza – you know, talk
about gays, talk about how we bring in tourism from the film festival around
gays, but dissociate yourself from the Esperanza. The Esperanza and Graciela
are the problem, and so – you know, and then I had one of the council
members, Flores, say, you know, you should never talk to us that way. That was
very disrespectful.

And I, you know, for like three or four years or five years or six years I
never watched that video because we taped that video – we bought that
video, and – because I was feeling so bad about what I said, and then
when I finally watched it, it was like I didn’t say anything wrong. You
know, I was very respectful, but I just held them accountable, and I remember
Sandra Cisneros and María Elena Gaitán and other people two weeks
later go before the council and they were speaking and it was like Mr. Mayor,
pay attention to us. And I’m like, they’re getting to do it. And
so it was good that they did it, and who were the people challenging the council
were women of color, right, and Latina women specifically and so we get defunded
and there’s no notice publically why we got defunded.

I actually had that same councilmember, Flores, come up to me and tap me and
so to the back of the council chambers and he said, look, here’s the piece
of paper you’re going to be defunded. You’re not going to get any
money and that’s it. I’m like, well, when did this decision get
made and it’s like it just got done. So all of this information becomes
really good information for us because we filed a lawsuit because what they
did was they made a decision behind closed doors the night before and as I talked
to each one of the different allies that we have on the council, who still aren’t
strong enough to at least vote against the policy – it was an 11 to zero
vote to cut the Esperanza 100 percent, to cut all the arts organizations 15
percent – was – you know, at least they told us well, we met here.
We did this. You know, there was a six-signature memo and yours was to eliminate
the arts funding and of course the money goes to the sports foundation and all
these other entities. And many of the men of color on the board basically say
poor people and people of color don’t support the arts because it’s
an elitist form and we don’t have money, so we have to take what money
we do have and give it to streets and drainage and that’s the important
thing that the community has.

The only – there was an African-American council member who was an old
– who had just written in La Voz de Esperanza probably in April
as he was running for office saying he wanted our vote and how great of an activist
he was. Months later in August he’s denouncing the Esperanza and the film
festival “Out at the Movies,” and he can’t support something
like this because his church and his leaders and his constituency doesn’t
allow for that.

And then the conservative right-wing religious types have a few people speak,
but mainly it’s a lot of us packing the place, but even here some of the
arts organizations said something supporting the Esperanza and many others just
like again pushed away from the Esperanza and didn’t – you know,
and so again those are places where you hurt but – you know, it’s
not – you know, again, they’re not ready to lose funding to stand
in support of us.

MS. CORDOVA: So what were the immediate decisions that you made and what was
the sort of longer process of leading up to your lawsuit I guess?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Well, not having – I mean, we didn’t even know
how much – you know, people would say, well, what percentage of the funding
did you lose and how’s it going to affect you? I mean, immediately we
still had an event on that Friday and Saturday, which is called Mujer Canto
and so it was an all-woman salsa band and so we danced in a very – you
know, we were all sad, but we were kind of trying to say this isn’t going
to bring us down. Eduardo Diaz was here with his family, too, and so –
and again, these people – they alerted other people, again, what was coming
down and they would never call us up to say anything like that and so it was
hard for us to plan and organize and part of my struggle was to trust my own
instincts.

Like I went to some Latino leaders and I said – and we were also organizing
with Sandra at that same time when she was bringing the MacArthur geniuses that
happened in November, so we were meeting with these people and I was saying,
can you all come together and speak on behalf of the Esperanza, and one of those
women said, no, let’s just – let us talk to them one on one –
that publicly it might not make a difference, and my gut instinct was waiting
to be – we need to see them in public denounced. The possibility of defunding
the Esperanza and it’s not going to happen, and because they were 20 years
older than I was, it was like, okay, I’m going to trust them on this one.

And they didn’t, right. They didn’t have those meetings one on
one with them and we – and I never got supported, because I would have
helped to coordinate that public gathering, right. I would have just asked them
to stand. So I trusted some of those people and then we lost. And then afterwards
another group of all men – male – Latino leaders, including the
director of – MALDEF – and some other Latino inner-city groups that
I had been working with met with the mayor and said, you know, let’s give
back the money, but it was already a done deal.

So – but at least they tried. It was – I wanted them to do it beforehand
and again I wanted them to do it publicly, so at least I learned to trust my
own instincts a lot more. I mean, I was 37 at that point, but again a lot of
the way I’ve learned and I’ve led is to get everybody’s input
and then make decisions that way, and as I get older and wiser I’m just
like trust your instincts some of these times, or I have enough experience now
to know that this will work, so it’s not just based on instinct, it’s
actually based on experience.

So I’ve learned to do that a little bit more, and then – so after
we get done with Mujer Canto and we had planned though and celebrated, or didn’t
celebrate –

MS. CORDOVA: Right.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: – then it was about, okay, what programming can we
and can we not do and so we were going to bring some youth from Houston so we
just – you know, had to cancel programming that we had already set up
for October and November and December and basically just say no more programming
for this year, and yet people continue to say, well, we have to do this and
we have to do this and so we did a couple of different things and so we didn’t
stop programming, but it was just more selective at the first, you know, six
months and then as time went on there was – you know, people started –
you know, again, this is where the women of color and queer women of color tend
to come in and not charge us for their fee, so, again, if Cherríe was
going to change $2,000 or like $5,000, it’s like I’m going to be
in San Antonio, let me do something and you all do the program, so we still
had to pay for printing, for postage, but then we didn’t have to cover
an artist’s fee.

So we did that in terms of programming. In terms of the community, the community
wanted to do something. It’s like, what are we going to do? We just got
defunded. You can’t just do that. And so well, let’s get together,
so we ended up having monthly or bimonthly meetings at the Esperanza on weekends
to say what do you want to do, and so kind of getting a sense of what needed
to happen. Do – you know, because people say sue, and I was like, well,
I wanted to sue, but I was talking to two attorneys since 1994 about suing them
and people said there’s no case. There’s no case. You have nothing.
It’s like, really? We have nothing?

And I just was really frustrated and in ‘96 Amy [Kastely] gets onto the
board, so ‘94, ‘95 she has nothing and in ‘96 she gets on
the board. By ‘97 she’s very much engaged as a board member, so
she’s coming to these meetings and she’s able to say there are issues
that we can really look at, and then she brings together some other attorneys.
She invites men and women and the only ones that come to the table are the women
– white and Chicana – from here as well as Austin, and it really
is the women from San Antonio that end up staying.

She invited like – [inaudible] – who was at UT law school and then
doesn’t get tenure there, so now she moves out, so that’s why we
lost her. I think we would have had someone like her on the – and basically
what’s good about – and then again because they’re board members
of Esperanza, they already have a different sense of how the world works, so
we’ll file a law suit, but you may lose. And it’s like, that’s
fine, as long as we say it’s an educational tool, so the lawsuit as an
educational tool to talk about integration of issues, about race, class, gender,
sexuality, to talk about how this happened not just to the Esperanza, but to
all poor people and working class people and so we can file the lawsuit and
we can talk about the issues in the same ways that we could do something to
connect the community then we’ll do it.

So that takes a year’s worth of conversation, so by August of ‘98,
a whole year after we get defunded, we have a – we file a lawsuit because
I think we had up to two years, but we did it after the first year. And we’ve
talked to hundreds of people by that time because nobody – the same group
of people don’t necessarily show up. What’s good about that –
I mean, some people who show up to every meeting would say, well, I already
heard it – you know, but you will hear things differently. So for those
like myself, I learned what the issues were for the community because I went
to all the meetings, but I also learned the law in a really profound way because
it’s – and so do other people, right.

And so, again, how do we talk about the issues because NEA Four had just happened
also and the law came down maybe in ‘98 and they lost their case essentially,
and they talked about censorship, and so for us it was like, again, censorship
is not the issue for the Esperanza because as people of color, as people we’ve
all be censored, and as poor people, as working class people, you know, and
so that doesn’t jive with out community, so that the phrase became “respecto
es basico.” I mean, we tried a lot of different ideas, but ultimately
it was respect is basic – “respecto es basico.” It goes back
to a value that we thought we could launch our project that way.

Also in ‘98 – January of ‘98 we do the Arte es Vida campaign
because we challenge the notion that the council members had talked about –
art is only for the wealthy, and so that’s happening. So all these things
are allowing us to basically talk to the community about what they see –
if they see art and culture as an important element in their lives. And, over
and over – you know, 9,000 signatures in four to five months we’re
collecting – basically the community said, yes, it’s important to
us. It is as important as streets and drainage, but we want both. We don’t
have to – want to choose, and I guess if they’re given the choice
to choose, everybody says whatever, but nobody – the council members were
making those decisions on their own or, you know, when we talked to them they’d
talk about streets and drainage. Yeah, well, nobody goes around saying, you
know, I went to this theater, because our community doesn’t get it, but
they were saying we understand that concepts of culture are connected to English
as a second language. I mean, we understand that it’s connected to the
policies of immigration.

These were conversations they were giving to us, right? We weren’t imposing
that idea. It’s like, will you sign this, and this is – you know,
this program that you’re at is something funded by the project, you know,
like the Cojunta festival. Like the Low-rider festival, like the Martin Luther
King march, which wasn’t funded, but – you know, the International
Women’s Day, the Earth Day. We were going to places where lots of people
were going to be and having those conversations. And that was – you know,
and it was a challenge I had two cultural arts organizations. Do we have conversations
with our constituencies about why we do – and what – how they’re
affected by it, right?

I mean, I know that for me the – and I don’t do it as much, when
I go up and I introduce the program, it’s the podium. It’s where
you get to be the – you know, to put out the issues. And so when I get
to do that, I talk about all the things that are going on as I let other staff
people do it. You know, they’re more afraid or – so they just announce
whatever’s coming up, but it’s like – for me it’s like
the lecture or whatever. [Laughter.] And so it was good for me to be able to
do that, especially around ‘97, ‘98, ‘99, and throughout the
entire four years of this lawsuit to be able to just connect things and –
as we’re doing right now around the Patriot Act.

It’s like, this moment you being here is – you know, would be seen
as a terrorist act. It’s like, well, let’s sign up, you know. So
we wanted – so we did Arte es Vida, we did Respecto es basico. Hundreds
of people show up at whatever lunch hour we have the press conference. We’re
able to – I guess we have the national ACLU and the national Lesbian-Gay
– LAMBDA legal defense looking to us to see if they can collaborate and
be attorneys. And we go and interview them and select ACLU because ACLU is kind
of broader and the LAMBDA legal defense is just focused on queer issues and
we’re saying, no, it’s broader than that.

And then ultimately we lose the ACLU, right, because they were just focused
n being the big national people and knowing everything and not wanting to work
in the community with us, so they disrespect our process and they’re ready
to – you know, they figure we’re going to lose the case anyway and
they want to win and so they’re ready to go to settlement and whatever
and so they quit on us before we get to fire them. And then we’re nervous.
It’s like, oh, they quit on us. What is that going to have on the national
level because they’re connected to funders and we don’t want to
be seen as the bad little brown people like wouldn’t support the national
ACLU and – but it didn’t ultimately affect us at all.

And we win and so I think their surprised with the win and I think because
– we win because it’s always what we said: it was going to be an
educational tool. It’s always going to be talking to the community. I
mean, again, the experiences we had what we wanted to do was just like these
house parties which we ended up calling cafecitos, you know, again playing –
you know, it wasn’t called a house party. It wasn’t called whatever
other café whatever, but it was just like cafecito, pan dulce and café,
or whatever and you just keep it simple and we’ll come to your event –
to your little gathering and you get to participate and speak to it as much
as anybody else.

And initially everybody wanted the attorney or attorneys to go, and –
but again as we learned this stuff we were able to speak with the same strength
as any – of the attorneys and it was – you know, we just had to
create those different sorts of things that people could do, so cafés
– cafecitos were one things. Somebody else said, well, how about other
things? You know, Fuerza Unida was also working with us and so they are seamstress,
so it was like how do we create some sort of quilt, so there was a quilt that
was created – you know, that they didn’t do alone, but like when
we were at the Earth day we had a little booth that was set up and we had cut
up, you know, 12 by 12 inch pieces that were going to be sewn onto this quilt,
but then the imagery was theirs to select – you know, to do whatever it
was. And so we found ourselves in different places and we did have things like,
I guess, from the milagro del Corazon – you know, whatever, but we’ve
got that somewhere stored upstairs and didn’t – you know, it wasn’t
super big, but it was another way that we were able to get people involved in
it.

People started doing street theater. You know, for a whole year I had a group
of people saying let’s do street theater, let’s do street theater,
let’s do street theater, let’s do street theater. And it’s
like, well, do it, do it, do it. And then finally I had an intern that came
in and she was also interested in theater, so she was able to find somebody
in the community that had done street theater in Mexico with the Mascarones
and came and did two classes and within that first class, you know, divided
up the group and they all did skits and one of those skits was something that
we really liked, but then when we kind of put that out there, it was like –
I guess Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? was just brand new at that time,
so they did, “Who Wants to Be a City-Funded Organization?” and it
was just a play on that and it was just a great 10-minute piece and then we
incorporated – or long and I know we incorporated – we had some
young people drumming, so they introduced that and we had Vicki Gris, who was
a staff person then, who did some of her own poetry, you know, so it became
like a 30-minute sort of thing.

And then we moved it, right? So again it was from first Friday at the Blue
Star event, which was successful to – okay, people hang out at churches.
Let’s go to these where, again, we have a contact person in the church
who is willing to introduce us or we’ll be willing to talk to the priest
that let’s us – you know, as the people come out of church we’re
out there and we’re presenting and they’re just hanging out there
and having them sign again or just know what the issues are, so we went to lots
of churches that way, so it was just incorporating what people’s desires
were and saying, okay, let’s do it, but again also letting them do it
rather than imposing it on us to do everything, and the cafecitos were the best
place where I think people really learn.

And I remember the first one that we did was at the group – it was a
family’s house – you know, about eight or 10 people and it was all
in Spanish and it was church-based, right, so we basically had to go to their
mass. And I took with me another staff person who is a 50 year-old man, but
who is mainly English dominant, so there we were. And we left them – at
that time we had made the ads and the postcards and maybe we had already come
up with the “Todos Somos” bumper stickers and yard signs, so –
yeah, we had, so we were able to leave them with those things, and next day
they call up and say the yard signs are up. You know, they’re over here.
If you drive by Culebra [ph] Road, you’ll see a few of them, so it was
– you know, we went to the King William area, which is a very wealthy
area, but we had people who supported us there and then we went to Rotary Club
because people told us they belonged to this Rotary club and somebody said we
belong to La Vaca association, so those places weren’t necessarily places
that our allies – that we knew we were going to find allies, but because
– like for some conservative Republicans that were in the audience, they’d
say, well, we believe in the Constitution and your First and Fourteenth Amendments
were violated and we don’t believe anybody should be having these violations,
so give us a sign.

So it just depended on – you know, because we were able to just speak
to those communities. They’d ask the questions, we’d respond in
that way, so before you knew it, there were 1,000 of those yard signs all over
the place – many more bumper stickers on people’s cars and then
one of the other things I thought of was like the big banners that could go.
You know, and they’d cost about $500 each. You know, $100 – like
$300 or $400 to make, but then $100 to put up and we just said, okay, let’s
find six locations. You know, again, let’s do the research because we
could have put the big ones on the big sign, but that was just too expensive,
but it’s like nobody had done – they had those yard signs that just
go over there because you’re really promoting a festival, and it’s
like, well, this was going to say “Todos Somos Esperanza.” Right,
and it doesn’t say support the Esperanza people – you know, it’s
just “Todos Somos Esperanza,” so we found six different sites throughout
the city so that it would affect everybody. Just the places I thought would
help – and others – and those come out just as were going to court
so we think that that helped the judge just saying there’s a lot of support.

And then we also asked friends that we knew that were friends of the judge.
It was like, you’re friends of the Esperanza, you know, just show your
face. And then we also put people in as witnesses, too, that – and we
also had a mock trial, so it was a practice for the attorneys, but it was also
that the community could come and could critique the process. And again, it
became an idea – somebody from the community maybe, and some – one
attorney was too freaked out. It’s like, no, because then people would
find out and then they’re going to know our – you know, and Amy’s
thing was like everybody should know everything. We’re not hiding anything
from them and this is a good way to have people critique it.

And we created a whole jury over there. I mean, a whole courtroom and one of
our staff members who is now in law school wanted to be – wants to be
a judge one of these days, so she said I’ll be the judge and she got herself
something and stood – I mean, and sat the entire time and one of our other
staff people who has done theaters set up the stage for that and we had some
of our young people videotaping it as well as drawing images of what was going
on and then the community that showed up, basically we would stop the process
and critique – you know, okay, you just finished doing this witness and
I didn’t understand that thing. Can you ask him in a different way, or
your answer was – you know, as you’re practicing you might have
to do this and this and that, so – you know, and we videotaped all of
that as well, so – so it’s just all these different things.

And then right before – the day before we go to court, somebody says
we have to have a vigil. It has to be with candles and it has to be a blessing
and all that sort of stuff, so we packed – you know, outside of the space
in front of the courthouse. You know, everybody’s got their candles and
Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, who ends up being our expert witness – you
know, gets to speak and you know, the Antonia [Antonia Castaneda] and the Josie
Mendez – and just the community and everybody’s just with flowers
and candles and the next day when we come in it’s like it’s gotten
– we’ve got all this wax here. I’m like, oh, no. We’re
going to get in trouble because we had just left our markings and probably we
could go there today you’d still have the oil that – but, you know,
we did things that nobody had done, but it was a way, again, everybody got connected
and then the community showed up, so the place was always packed and that, I
think, also had an effect. Not just who was there, but the who was there was
the children, you know, so parents took their kids out of school so they would
witness that and say this is going to be – this is more important than
you going to classes and – then you had Viejitos.

MS. CORDOVA: Well, that’s just great. I have to say. I’d like to
keep you talking for just a little bit more, Graciela. I know we’re sort
of getting over time, but I’m going to change out this disc, give us a
break, and –

[End of tape three.]

MS. CORDOVA: All right, we are recording. This is Cary Cordova for the Archives
of American Arts, Smithsonian Institution, interviewing Graciela Sánchez
on July 2, 2004. This is session two and disk three.

And, Graciela, what I was thinking about as you were talking about this whole
process, this amazing process, one, not only was the lawsuit giving you this
sort of higher profile in the community maybe, but also a national profile.
Was there also – I mean, despite having lost of all of this funding, at
the same time did you find yourself having a larger support network nationally?
Did that happen at all?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: What’s interesting is where within the community
the national support came from. I think – we definitely saw the change
from the press to the foundations to just, you know, people working on First
Amendment rights and such. But The New York Times had to do this story
on the Esperanza before the local press would do it because the local press
is so used to just hiding us and making us invisible.

So because, thank goodness, they had done that story two weeks before the
de-funding on the de-funding of the arts and the attacks on the arts –
that was a New York Times writer – when we got de-funded, or
as we were getting de-funded we looked for that same person and said, watch
what’s happening right now; something’s going to happen. And so
she wrote the story the day before the – or the day of the de-funding
and the day after. The Express News didn’t write about until
after The New York Times, because you know that they check each other
out, so they have to do the story.

And so that helped, although trying to get national stories, again, from anybody
was really hard. We had to hire Barbara Renaud to she if she could help pitch
those stories. She writes one story, like “Remember the Alamo,”
in The Nation, and from that, three people send in donations totaling
$10,000, which – [laughs] – you know. But so, for me, it was like,
wow, look at the effect of a national – a story in this progressive newspaper.
But we can’t usually get those stories. I mean, we’ve been trying
to get stories about many things and they see it as very local and it has no
connection. But again, it’s the racism of it being in Texas, the racism
of it being a small town. But New York City – what happens in New York
City when Giuliani does the same thing, it’s no longer local; it’s
a national story because it’s in New York City. Or if it happens –
so again, which cities are recognized and acknowledged as important and which
ones aren’t, and again, how does racism come across, and all that other
stuff kind of plays into it.

Within the gay community, the National Gay Task Force, the national –
just the national groups, throughout – from ‘94 to ‘97, were
not playing along, didn’t want to deal with these issues that were complicated
that talk about gay, on gay, right, except for the national, like the foundation
– the Estrella Foundation and the Funding Exchange. So these are foundations
but they’re activist foundations. They’re smaller, but they’re
very activist based. And so the Estrella Foundation brings together national
progressive gay people to try to help figure out how to help us and support
us. And for me, the best part was just that – [background noise] –

MS. CORDOVA: Yeah, let’s pause for a second.

All right. We’re back to recording. So the Estrella Foundation –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: So, yeah, so what they do more than anything else at least
makes me know that they’re supportive of us, because I remember, again,
the attacks between ‘94 and ‘97 were pretty immense. They were threatening,
they were scary, and I remember saying, what does it mean for us? You need to
meet some of these guys who come and shoot us down and be dead before you come
in and take over –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Yeah, yeah. And if I would speak, I had some of these
gay men just always there and asking questions or taking the information and
rewriting what I said and kind of making – demonizing – there was
a constant demonization – of me personally, but also the Esperanza.

And so, you know, and as a group of people in San Antonio who were just trying
to stick together and not make us go crazy and not make us feel like –
suspect of everything and everybody, but by them coming together and talking
with us – and I had just seen Scott – [inaudible] – and Suzanne
Pharr and Carmen Vasquez and Ivy Young, all these people who had done lots of
work and had worked over on the Colorado issue and the Washington State organizing.
So at least I knew we weren’t alone and that really was supportive.

And then when we filed lawsuit, it was a lot of First Amendment people and
the artists from across – I mean, we had from South Africa to everywhere
else in the country sending letters that supported the Esperanza and challenging
the city. And of course the city’s response was, you see the only people
who care are not even San Antonio; it’s all national, so ignore them because
they’re just national people. So our local folks, the powers – the
local – the powerful leadership just continued to downplay the significance,
I think, of what had just happened.

And then, because we got cut, we were able to access some funding, say, from
the Nathan Cummings Foundation, who had really funded a lot of national organizations,
but they heard about it, and this African American program officer within the
arts made sure to give us some money, and the Rockefeller, which we had just
gotten some monies and allowed me to turn in my grant two weeks late. [Laughs.]
I said, look this is happening, and usually founders don’t allow for that.
But I don’t – but still, between my own – I mean, I think
there were other people who played the game a lot more so than I did, because
I know the Alaska folks were also being de-funded the same time and they were
getting bigger – but again, theirs was more gay and we wanted to complicate
things. What we found out was it was the mayor who was the lead person in trying
de-fund the Esperanza, and he’s the one that said that it was our politics
that he didn’t like. You know and so his – it was –

MS. CORDOVA: Howard Peak.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Howard Peak, and part of his testimony is such that they
asked him, well what about Latina – do you think the Latina Women’s
Arts Cooperative is political, speaking of Mujer Artes, right? And he says,
well, it depends on what type of people are making the work.

And so, a certain – so it wasn’t just to say no. And he was also
somebody that told – as people met with him at one of these citywide meetings
it’s like keep yourself way from the Esperanza. The Esperanza is bad.
He told women who of Mujer Artes, why can’t you do your own project without
the Esperanza? And the women went to talk to him and they were appalled by his
response. But, again, we kept on thinking it was Marbut or somebody else that
had instigated, but after all the testimony, we found out that lead guy was
the mayor himself. So that’s why they needed to continue to downplay the
significance of the lawsuit, and so –

MS. CORDOVA: And the trial was very quick, right? It was only four days?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Two days.

MS. CORDOVA: Yeah, okay.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: We expected it to be a whole week. And the judge said,
it will be done in two days. So we had to jam-pack everything. But even, again,
the process – if you read my testimony, I speak in Spanish as well and
go back and forth, and we consciously did that because I remember having to
practice with another attorney the Q&A, right, and I started falling apart
because we weren’t hitting it. It was like, I can’t answer that,
or I can’t answer it in the same way, or you’re not getting what
I’m saying. And then turning to Amy it was like, this isn’t going
to work, and then her being more experienced than the other attorneys, just
kind of talking her through this stuff and then allowing me to do that in Spanish,
and anybody else. And I know Eduardo Diaz got to speak and he was talking about
the Quinceañera and he says, you know, the 50th anniversary, and the
judge turns around and says, excuse me, this is San Antonio; what do you think?
We know all know what that is; don’t bother to check.

And when I spoke in Spanish it seems like people noticed within the audience,
like, people were smiling, people were happy. So it was just challenging, all
those new places. And I think, again, that’s what – especially if
someone were really to kind of study this case. And, again, why haven’t
people really commented on the studies of it? And I know, again, some graduate
or undergraduate students have done a real quick, like I said, over-the-Internet
response in writing their grade, rather than like come and sit with the people.
You know, there are many people; I’m just one. But they wouldn’t
even talk to me, much less – it was just all Internet-based research,
and then reading and seeing all the wrong assumptions that they make, or to
continue to say it’s just all about us being gay. Well, that’s where
they want to portray that story when it’s more complicated than that.

So, yes, we have this national impact and get national recognition in some
major way that I don’t think any body expected, and that’s good,
especially since we get to survive because of the national foundation support,
but that’s all kind of disappeared now also. And people’s position
is, well, you’re still getting that funding and you’re still doing
good and we don’t need to worry about you, and you’ve gotten all
this money – because we got half-a-million dollars, but we had to spend
it out paying back some of the attorneys and then some of the costs. And then
essentially everything we had has gone to the upkeep, because what we didn’t
do in the entire time was keep the upkeep of the building. So we lost an elevator
and now we had to put in a new elevator. The elevator alone was $150,000. So
community helped raise $50,000, but again, this is not a wealthy community,
so that extra $100,000 came from the lawsuit and now we’re having so we
have some money left but it’s all been allocated for the upkeep up the
building because there’s no monies for that sort of programming in general.

MS. CORDOVA: I was sort of thinking about that myself, but when I saw you,
that seemed like so much money initially to me when I was thinking about it,
and then I thought, well, you were without funding from 1997 to at least 2001,
right?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Mm-hmm.

MS. CORDOVOA: And they had basically withheld $76,000 from you a year, so then
of course it made sense – you were probably on the downside, ultimately.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Oh, yeah. I think we were trying – when we started
negotiations – like the judge didn’t give a dollar amount. His response
was, here’s my ruling but now you have to negotiate with the city, and
I’m going to have somebody come and mediate that. And it was another horrible
experience because city staff just kept on saying, we don’t have any money,
we don’t have any money; we’re not going to give you – So
they were at zero and we were at, like, 1.5. And so the first session we had
with one mediator, we came out with – nobody agreed to anything.

So the judge got really upset and brought in somebody else to mediate. And
so they went from zero to 100, 200 – and we went from 1.5 to – and
because what we wanted was the $76,000 plus – times those numbers of years
plus – then the attorneys fees. And the attorneys fees were half-a-million
dollars alone, so it should have been that sort of place, so we just basically
either got the attorney’s fees or got whatever it was –

MS. CORDOVA: Right.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: So, yeah, it seemed like a lot and everybody was like,
wow. And to this day people just think we’re wealthy because I think in
their heads also, half-a-million dollars is a lot of money that we can use for
– as an organization we should – essentially we’re like a
half-a-million dollar organization just per year, right, so that’s one
year’s budget now. But this year and – the numbers just keep on
going down right now because the economy is so bad that locally people aren’t
giving, foundations have just pulled back. 911 also happened, but 911 is affecting
us more today than it did then because it’s just – the economy has
just – again, people don’t have the jobs; they’re letting
go of people. And the foundation role has just really pulled back a lot. So
once upon a time they were looking at the South and they were going to give
all the money, and then all of a sudden they’ve just taken it away. So
just all this post-911, a year or two later.

MS. CORDOVA: Well, what did you do to sort of celebrate winning that case?
That must have been a tremendous moment.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: We had a big a press conference upstairs and it was, I
guess – because we didn’t know when the ruling was going to come
down. So it was hard. But we also had a – I mean, it was August and it
wasn’t until May of the following year that the case, you know –
he ruled on it in – normally I guess it’s two, three, four months
later, but we were just like, when is he going to come down? And for whatever
reason, again, instinct or insight, it’s like, it’s going to come
down now. And so we pulled out those activist – [inaudible] – put
them all over town again, and so I thought, in my head I guess, if he’s
not ready, he should. Now he knows that we’re ready so come on out.

And I don’t know, again, if we caused him to turn in the paper on time
now – [laughter] – because we were like, we’re waiting. So
we had them and then the decision came down. So we went to court, because he
did call us in within 24 hours and then he ruled, and so then we came back and
then called the press and just had a spontaneous press conference, and ordered
carnitas, and ordered whatever, and a couple hundred people showed up, you know,
again, just at the drop of a hat.

And really that was it; it was it, because we didn’t really have time
to plan anything else. But what I did notice, I mean, for me, between filing
the lawsuit and winning lawsuit, there were – what I saw was I finally
saw hope in people’s faces, like, you could just see that. I mean, I could
never describe it but there was this sense of hope that you could just see in
their eyes or in the way they spoke, and really that was – the final victory
was just how people just – it’s like, oh, you did it and you won.
And so, that there was this sense from the community just to start saying, we’re
going to challenge back; we’re not just going to give up, we’re
now going to go forward.

We’ve been doing all this work around PGA and we lost – going –
four or five months going to the city council saying, no, no, no, no, and then
city council still rejecting us, and then we’re like, okay, let’s
go out into the streets, and collecting a hundred-thousand signatures, right?
So would that same energy have been there if we hadn’t won the lawsuit?
And so there’s just this attitude and change in the community that just
we feel helped give us more, not only hope but just courage with the council,
and then that city council, half of those people were kicked out, like six or
seven of them were removed because of that decision, and people just knew that,
and it’s like, wow, we did that.

And the council, like the mayor right now, who was one of the people who helped
to de-fund the Esperanza a Chicano, who really doesn’t identify that way,
his attitude is – like right now there are some elections that are coming
up and he says, our community gets confused when you have more than one initiative
there, so we’re just going to keep to this one thing because when we’ve
have four or five, they get confused; their brain gets muddled. This is how
he’s talking about community.

If you look at how the community has voted, they voted – like this last
election, they said no to their city amendments, which would have paid them
money, which would have extended their most limited time – term limits
in the country, and yet they voted up the ethics policy and they said yes to
paying workers a certain amount of money. They’ve said yes to buying land
and taxing themselves to buy land over the aquifer. They’ve said very
clearly no to the city council and yes to things that support the quality of
life in San Antonio. And yet the council – him, just last week and the
week before, he’s just been saying, they get muddled, they don’t
– it’s unclear so let’s just keep to one issue. So the November
election will have one thing that the community has to vote for because they
don’t want to muddle them.

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.]

MS. ESPERANZA: So people get angry, and I think it’s just a good response.

MS. CORDOVA: Right. Yeah, it seems like one thing is consistent with Esperanza,
that you don’t talk down to the community, that it’s very much in
the opposite to the mayor’s action.

If I could – you brought up PGA, and that was just one other issue that
I really wanted to address because it seems like Esperanza has taken the initiative
to deal with urban planning right now, and not just urban planning like the
PGA project but also demolition of important historical sites, especially here
on the west side. And I know the case of La Gloria was important here, and one
of the things that I found really moving in learning about that story was that
you actually, on the day it was to be demolitioned, offered the owner a check
of $239,000, which he rejected on the spot. And can you just maybe just elaborate
on that whole story of what happened and – but also how this project has
been part of a larger movement.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: I mean, I think if you read some of the rants – that
I’ve written, which it basically then turns out to be some of the language
was to talk about cultural genocide. And when I – the work and the understanding
of who becomes an activist, who goes on to study more, who goes on to perform,
or people that seem somehow grounded and have a sense of who they are, so it’s
because they went to college and they ran into some MEChA group or some queer
group or whatever, they have this better sense of identifying themselves and
kind of going there and feeling good about themselves, right? And who doesn’t?

And just again, looking at my mom and my dad, the fact that my father comes
really strong to the United States and identifies as Mexicano – he also
identifies as an American too, but it’s okay to be a west-sider, it’s
okay – that’s the concept that I get all along: it didn’t
matter. All my cousins moved to the north side with their families but we stayed
in the west side. And the constanance that it’s okay; it’s okay
to be poor, it’s okay to – but we’re clean, we’re smart,
we don’t steal. Those are all stereotypes. To hear that, not in the same
language, the use of stereotype but to be able to say that’s what they
say of us and that’s not what we’re like. And my parents –
they’re just being clear, right.

So, you need that clarity to be able to then act, I think, and many people
aren’t clear because they don’t feel good about who they are, they
hate themselves. How can you ask them to be people who are civic leaders or
even interested in voting when they don’t believe that their vote counts
or that they have an opinion on anything. And we see the transformation. I think,
again, professors see it in – and they can when they move the kids in
this direction and they see them just kind of get excited and we see them doing
whatever. Well, we see that’s where the transformation. We’ve seen
people who wear blue contacts lenses and married to a white man, who then call
themselves by their white last names, and all of this. And after a few years,
they’re saying I am – [inaudible] – da, da, da, da and I need
to wear that. And it’s from the young kids to the 50-year-olds to the
70-year-olds, to have an Emma Tenayuca production, and hundreds of people, the
thousands of people that show up because they want to see themselves, to see
those families who hated themselves because they were told that Emma was a commie
and bad, to kind of come together, 50, 60, 70 years later and say it’s
okay, and to be able to release. So it’s a sense of cultural grounding
that’s been important.

La Gloria, I had heard, was coming down, and I grew up half-a-mile away from
that place so I knew exactly what it was and where it was, and I called up people
I knew who were helping to organize to try to save it. And some of these folks
were from San Antonio Cultural Center that wanted to fix it up and make it their
own cultural center. And I think, unfortunately, that was the cause for –
part of the reason it might have fallen apart because they – again, when
we work by ourselves, we tend to lose, right? So for him, he was afraid that
people were going to come and take it over, and he wanted to save it for himself.
Then there was the granddaughter that wanted to save it for posterity and for
the history, whatever, and they kind of came together, but they weren’t
necessarily – and then there was the historic preservation community that
wanted to save it because they should save it but understood that most Mexicans
didn’t care about historical preservation because of her past experience
with that, so probably didn’t fight too hard or didn’t let people
know about it.

And I call up and I say, what do you need? Do you not want us to go city council?
We can start organizing people we can send. And he’s like, it’s
okay; maybe somebody can write something. I remember calling Antonia Castaneda
and saying, can you write something about why a building like La Gloria is important?
So I think she sent that, but that was November, and then we don’t hear
anything else about it for a while. And then I come from a trip maybe in Chicago
or somewhere – I was out of town – and I turn on the TV and it’s
10:00 and they’re talking about people preparing to demolish it, and people
are protesting. And it’s 10:00 at night, so they’re there and they’re
live, and so I just call up somebody and say I’m going to be there. And
so – because this is my neighborhood, right, so for myself I went. And
I said, I’ll stand guard here too, right. And so then I start talking
to people who are there, and there are only like 10 of us, or whatever, and
I stay the entire night, and people come and go and they bring pizza, and I’ve
missed the weekend, and they talk a little bit about that.

But then, I’m still there in the morning at 7:00, at 8:00 in the morning,
and then I call Amy and say, look, this all coming down. And so she somehow
connects with some people – they have better attorneys to do an injunction
to stop the wrecking ball from coming through. I call staff and say, I’m
over here, and so they all – people who want to just all race over there
and bring themselves there, and it’s like, what are you doing? We’re
just standing firm.

So we stand the whole day at that point to save it and were able to get an
injunction and basically have two weeks worth of time to figure out how to save
it. And then those two weeks are just working with that community, saying, come
on, let’s expand it; it can’t just be about you all. We’ve
helped to figure out how to run those meetings because, again, they’ve
mainly been male-based; they’ve been without agendas. And so, kind of
some of the skills that some of our staff has to teach, to kind of help do that
together: knocking doors, talking to people and helping to raise monies and
all that sort of stuff, and then going to court. And again, unfortunately, like
everybody knew Amy’s skills – Amy would have taken it to a Federal
Court, but this other person that was the lead lawyers said, it’s state,
because in state it’s who you know and how you talk to them. So she was
just following their lead.

Her thing was also about equal protection, to say that this building needed
to be protected just as the King William and the Monte Vista in these areas,
and this is in the west side so that’s an historically poor Mexican side
of town, so there has to be equal protection for that. They didn’t want
to argue that argument either as lawyers, and then the judge didn’t want
to even include it. And so, like, he was excluding equal protection.

And we have even good text there – and this also becomes our friendship
with the person in charge of the Historical Preservation Office in San Antonio,
that Amy – finally Amy gets a chance to get on there and she challenges
that she’s not supposed to talk about equal protection, and she asks the
head, Anna Glom [sp], who’s a white woman, show me where the historical
areas are. Is there anything on the west side? No. Why not? Well, there’s
little section – well, why not? Well, because we didn’t think anybody
was interested. Well, do you think there’s racism?

And then the judge is like, stop; you can’t answer that question. And
he huddles them and they whisper between themselves, and she’s –
and within that – but, Your Honor, there is racism. And so he allows the
question and so she says, well, are you saying you’ve been racist in your
decision? And then the woman says, yes, yeah, I have, because I just didn’t
think people were interested or whatever. And we’re like – [gasp]
–but still, he never allows for – the city attorneys are also not
wanting for any of that discussion on equal protection coming out, and so the
judge doesn’t get to rule on any of that and rules on whatever other sort
of thing and just says, you have until 48 hours and you can bring the wrecking
ball in.

So, the wrecking ball shows up and people are ready to tie themselves up and
all that sort of stuff, and do – and there’s that – the half-million
dollars, so we write the check because – and again, it was really sad
because the Guadalupe also gets involved and they want to save it for their
own building, and so, like their working with conservationists so they get $50,000.
And it’s a city councilman that’s a Chicana that says, it’s
about economic development and we need to tear this down, and there’s
graffiti, and it’s just a waste, and it’s going to fall on people
so let’s tear it down. But I’m like, there are thousands of people
that are wanting to save it. And then the politic of the city is like, if it’s
in your district, you get to define yes or no and the rest of the council gets
to support your decision and doesn’t challenge it. It’s like, when
did that become the way, right, he you could do that? So they honored him and
gave him the right to tear it down even though the community has gone to city
council, has shown this footage from the 1930s that we found that was from that
La Gloria and all the other Glorias because, again, he was a wealthy Chicano,
Mexicano owner, so he could do video – film his own or hire somebody.

And so we have all these images that we’re showing to the community and
taking it to the streets, demonstrating. But ultimately it’s like, let’s
just get a check, and one of the – that’s where Gloria and one of
our young people go before – and here, also imagine, we’re there
from all night long, some of us – I’m there with one other person,
a Susanna, and we start – there’s nothing there, it’s absolutely
silent, and then all of the sudden you start seeing the police come in with
their cones, and then you started seeing the big machines coming through. So
we’re calling everybody and it’s like, this is it, this is the day,
because we didn’t really know what day it was going to happen, so it was
the Monday after Easter, and – which I think is April Fools Day of that
year.

MS. CORDOVA: [Laughs.]

MS. SÁNCHEZ: So we’re like, oh, god. And then, we’re cut
off, right, so we’re not allowed – we’re pushed out from where
we are so we can only be on the opposite side. And then it’s not just
traffic police; the SWAT team comes out, right. So these are really taller guys,
mainly white, who are there. And it’s like, why do we have the SWAT team?
And what you have on the other side are mainly women, all women of color. There
are a few men but the men who were interested in the building didn’t show
– so many men that were organizing just disappeared. But, the women –
again, it’s like, why do women just play that part of – they know
they need to witness this. So they were the ones that were there. So there were
30 or 40 women. And like I turned totally red because of the sun beating really
bad and all that sort of stuff, but we stayed there. And it took them two days
to tear it down because it was such a strong and sturdy building. Even though
people said it could fall apart, it took them two days to tear it down. So we
were there the entire time and then they weren’t done, and then afterwards
we raced in when the cops disappeared and took little pieces of – bricks
and whatever, and they were still trying to keep us out.

But, yeah, so you have the SWAT team – and this is what when they race
off with the check, it’s like here’s the check, stop, don’t,
and they’re just – they never were going to accept that money. It
was just an excuse.

MS. CORDOVA: How did you even assemble that amount?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: It was the lawsuit.

MS. CORDOVA: It was the lawsuit money. I wondered.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: And it was a risk, too, because we were just assuming,
okay, well, we’ll give it up to save it, but will people help to give
it back to us or were we going to become owners? Because we weren’t necessarily
interested in owning it but we were interested in saving it, and so it was just
one of those things – and, okay, call up the board. Can the board agree
to do that? And it’s like nobody thought twice about it. It’s like,
so they just gave me a blank check. I wrote it out and the just sent it to Gloria
and she raced off there and they just, yeah, rejected it. And there’s
a front-page photo of them being dragged by the cops and everything like that
and then they got all these bruises. But it was the SWAT team; it wasn’t
the traffic police. The traffic police had only one or two cops and then the
SWAT team had like 15 of them and that’s what it was. So it was just like
you think of Chiapas, right, and the women and the army; well this is the same
sort of thing: who was right there and who was challenging.

MS. CORDOVA: And so did the La Gloria event cause the Cuentos Project? Is that
where it started or –

MS. SÁNCHEZ: It’s – solidified that project. We had just
– we were – Mujer Artes was struggling in the space and we thought
we would – I saw a building come up a couple of blocks away from that
on New Year’s Eve when driving to my parents’ or whatever, and I
stopped and saw it and I thought, oh, this is a neat house; maybe we can move
Mujer Artes there. But the women of Mujer Artes weren’t interested –
[laughs] – in moving there, yes and no, and so anyway, we ended up saying,
okay, we’re going to buy this and we’re also going to become owners
of this building, and it’s going to allow us to then have a say in what
happens in this community, which, historically, again, is the neighborhood that
every single one of us had some connection to, right? So I grew up in it and
I lived in it. Other people’s parents or grandparents lived in it, so,
René, his grandparents were the ones that started the Memorial Funeral
Home. So everybody has a connection to that. As somebody else said, it’s
the Ellis Island for the Chicanos of San Antonio, or just of the Chicano community
as they moved away from the border. And so, this is like the first big stop
from the border.

So then it just becomes the place, yeah, that’s it’s like okay,
well, let’s just make this the place that – Mujer Artes can stay
there and we’ll just have a second project on the west side, and it’s
been bringing the elders together. And initially it was a lot more not the elders
– you couldn’t – it was just like everybody that was interested
in knowing the history, so it was the 40- and 50-year-old and younger kind of
talking. And then, most recently it’s like, well, let’s bring in
the elders and the young people and let the young – let them tell their
stories and let the rest of us learn.

And we’ve done different projects. Like this year, we did the Posadas
because they were interested – they were saying this is something that’s
dying, nobody is doing Posadas any more. And in general just like how the church
was the cultural carrier once upon a time. Maybe it was through church traditions,
but from the Posadas to the crowning of the Virgin and all those things. I remember
– there’s this image of me and my sister as – my sister at
least looks brown – [laughter] – but my parents dressing us up as
little ingitas, right, with the little thing. And I remember that moment it
was the Virgin’s – I don’t know the specific date, but the
church did that and we would all go out and we – that tradition doesn’t
happen any more. Those celebrations don’t happen. The fact that you never
celebrate the Dia de San Antonio and yet I go to Little Italy in New York and
it’s always celebrated every June. It’s like, why is it celebrated
there but not here?

So they said, Las Posadas are disappearing so let’s find out. So we did
research and then we found out that the church still is doing it but it’s
not as elaborate, and so we worked with the church and then said, let’s
expand it. You go from this – the church across the street to the senior
center, even if it’s just within that same block, and you connect –
Pati Radle, the city councilwoman’s office is right across the church,
and right next to her is Mujer Artes, so that you stop at three places rather
than just one place. And that we able to, with funding, get – spend 150
bucks to bring in a Mariachi, little things like that that then made it a little
bit bigger and just better for everybody in general.

Now I’m trying to think, for next year, it’s like, how do we get
a banda, because bandas have disappeared, and yet when I was in Oaxaca that’s
what I saw is a whole bunch of bandas. And I said, well, all of us – I
mean, I was in the band, my brothers were in the band. I don’t have to
be that but how do we find the people that were at the Lanier high school band
and just say – because that’s what it is. Somebody learned a little
bit and just learned some songs and then it’ll sound like a real banda
– [laughter] – kind of a little off –

But just add those sorts of things, and then again, get people to give back
what little they have or what they know and then feel part – again, so
you integrate them in a better way, and in the stories, just having them –
the elders have this – at first they are afraid to speak and then, like,
they’re the ones that are demanding if we don’t show up on a Saturday
that we’re supposed to show up, they’re like, well, what happened?
And that’s the place that I wanted to go. It’s like, you all have
keys; open up the place and invite people in.

And they’re not interested in scanning, they’re not interested
in any – they’re interested in telling their stories. And they’ve
now met each other, even though they don’t know each other, and some people
– and now they’re inviting other people, right. So now we’re
hearing from the community. It’s like, oh, I heard about it through –
I’m in the VFW Post and my friends go to it, so when are you having this
next one because I want to go.

And then again, expanding that just to do these – like Rita Vidaurri.
We did something in 2001 with Lydia Mendoza, again, the book – I mean,
I think that was kind of a major place, and so Lydia Mendoza was 2001, La Gloria
gets torn down in 2002, so it’s kind of a culmination. And, again, for
Yolanda Broyles-González, it’s promoting the book. For us, it’s
promoting Lydia, right, and it’s like, you’ll sell the books if
we promote Lydia. [Laughter.] And so we did an homenaje to Lydia. You know,
500 people showed up; we did it at the Plaza del Zacate because that’s
where she had performed in that area with the “chili queens” and
all that sort of stuff.

We called it Plaza del Zacate rather than Milam Square, so a lot of the young
people who helped distribute the posters and the flyers and the stuff like that
only know it as Plaza del Zacate. And they videotaped it and all that sort of
stuff. And again these 500-plus people show up, and it wasn’t –
we got more promotion for this one because I guess we just learned, again, how
the media’s not going to help us. And Lydia, who’s even better known,
got lost a little bit more.

But we ordered 200 books; 180 books got sold and they were $30 each. And we
kind of just said, book signing, whatever; we didn’t say bring $30 for
the book. People just bought the book, and with it came the CD, and then an
artist – what’s her name, Ester Hernandez – was there to sell
her stuff, so she sold a lot of stuff. And that’s where Rita Vidaurri,
who we were looking for, pops up from the audience and then sings to her friend
a couple of songs and belts out Los Laureles and then disappears in
the audience. So many people disappeared, like the man that was in love with
Lydia Mendoza forever and was still in love with her, and we got him but then
he disappeared.

And our video that night got stolen. Somebody walked off with all of the stuff,
so we don’t have any of our original – we had somebody right there
and it disappeared. And some people that do have video won’t give it up.
So, again, like for us, it’s like La Gloria; like these things that we’re
doing, it’s like we’ll create something but then it’s like,
how does it just go out? Maybe people can pay five bucks or 10 bucks to get
a copy, but it shouldn’t be – it should be accessible, basically,
so it just goes out and it shouldn’t be who gets copyrights? Just let
it out. So that’s like really important to us.

But this past May we did this one and we took her into that west side rather
then the Plaza del Zacate because she grew up like two blocks away from there.

MS. CORDOVA: This is that Rita?

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Rita, right – Rita Vidaurri. And she’s really
honored, and she says – of course I want to do it in the neighborhood.
She now lives in the Jefferson area, and her sister, who used to be accompanying
her, named Queta, is like, you’re going in the west side, and how horrible.
You know, it’s that same struggle that we’ve had. You know, it’s
you don’t go back to that neighborhood; it’s a bad neighborhood.
It’s where the drugs happen; it’s where people steal. And it’s
just all false, right. But that’s what I grew up always being told about
the west side. That’s what my cousins said of me, that’s what the
students from other schools said of that, and that’s what they’re
still saying. It’s like if you go into that neighborhood, yeah, just poor
and leave it though.

And now they live in the – they’ve torn down most of that neighborhood
and put in all these ugly homes, and that’s the thing. So what’s
left, especially on Guadalupe Street and a couple of blocks in different directions
that didn’t get torn by urban renewal in the ‘70s is what we’re
trying to see that we can save, and yet trying to work with the different partners,
right – so the historic preservation woman, Anna Glom, calls us all the
time now. It’s like, they’re going to tear this one down; can you
come and save it?

So she did that last October or September – September, and she said,
they’re going to tear this down; it’s the Avenida Guadalupe, which
is a neighborhood association supposedly there to build whatever, but their
process has been to tear down. My father sits on that board and I fight him.
I say, you taught me all this stuff. But his inclination is to trust the executive
director. I said, he’s a bad guy – [laughter] – get rid of
him. And he’s anti-woman, and so – I remember rather than finding
ourselves in the same situation as La Gloria, waiting until it’s too late,
was to talk about it amongst ourselves, and somebody said, well, one of the
other board members, who’s the community liaison, I know her; let’s
go meet with her.

And so she opened it up, brought in their executive director, brought my mom
and my dad, and we showed them La Gloria. And this person who works for the
diabetes center is the vice president and on the board of Avenidas that was
just, we can’t take this down, and now let’s bring it to the fuller
board. So the full board also saw the video and said, okay, we can’t tear
it down, but they don’t know what to do with it.

And it’s like, well, I don’t know – it was like, Graciela,
what do you want to do with it? It like, it’s not up to us; it’s
about the community. We will help you put up posters, put up flyers, bring –
convene people in the community and ask the community to come up with the ideas.
But we can’t ask the Esperanza, because we have ideas but it really needs
to be the community. And they said, well, we’ve heard this in effect –
well, those are all good ideas; ask the community. [Laughs.] And they’ve
never had that meeting yet.

But then the – but we saved it so it’s still there, but what to
do with it hasn’t been decided. And then she called again, Anna Glom,
to say, there’s another building that’s going to tear down. Can
you come and save that one? So we, again, last week, we painted and all that
sort of stuff, and we were like, we need a strategy, so convene Avenida, the
city councilwoman, elders, whatever; let’s come together and define a
strategy. And it’s hard because everybody is so busy and nobody wants
to do that, and the city councilwoman is like, well, let’s make it a historical
district. It’s like, well, what does it mean to make it a historical district?
Are we going to be gentrifying the area; what does that mean? We don’t
want gentrify and kick our own community out, so what other things can we do?
Can it be kind of a mixed sort of thing? What have other communities done? But
somebody needs to do the research, so it becomes me, but I don’t have
time, and so I’m trying to get all these young people getting involved.

So like last week, before we went to paint, it’s like we created a little
fire, and I said, go out there and fire and the get the – we can’t
be the ones painting that building. Well, we can help, but they should be there
too, the community should – or at least know about it right? And so, like
René took a couple of other – René, the 24-year-old, took
the 15-year-old and the 17-year-old with him and they walked around, and so
he said, I was able to teach them what the project was.

And then we all learned from the people that we spoke to, right. So we heard
– so I was saying that it was a zapateria, which translates into a shoe
store, and the woman told me, no, it’s not a shoe store; it’s a
shoe repair place, and it’s like, oh, yes, I didn’t think of it.
[Laughter.] And then the woman told me about this building and this building,
and she told me who was there. And I said, well, that’s good. Of course,
would have been good to have a camera. But it’s about engaging other people.

So the project could be really big, and yet it’s just another project
which we have no staff for or – [laughs]. And, again, we don’t need
the staff as long as we have somebody helping. And I guess, ultimately, it’s
just like everything else. Like when I think of the – as I described what
happened with the lawsuit, and people who were engaged and people who became
staff after that, people who had been volunteering throughout the entire process,
and were really excited about the community coming together and doing that.
And they wanted that moment to continue to be relived over and over because
that was such an exciting moment, and I said, well, but that took a lot of time,
and it was a culmination of four years that happened before that for you to
come in in 2001 – from 1997 to that time – you came in right at
the tail end so you got to see, you got to perform in the street theater, but
you didn’t get – they’re like [claps] it has to happen now
[claps] – why aren’t the war stuff – it takes time. So I’m
trying to teach patience. [Laughs.]

And then, hours – it’s like, well, you want us to be here all the
time, but I want you to be here for the type of work this requires. That lawsuit,
you don’t think there weren’t many 80-hour-weeks and 90-hour-weeks.
They did. And for us to come up with that Respecto es Basico and to write that
press release, we didn’t go home at 6:00; we were here until one, two,
three in the morning. And we were trying to get other people to help us and
to do it, but it cost $20,000 for them to do it if we go to a PR firm. So we
had to do it ourselves, so – [laughs].

But it was the long hours. And so this stuff that’s going to happen in
the west side, and knocking on doors, for me, is the fun stuff. It is in community,
it is in working – that’s where I want to be; I want to be participating
in those conversations. I want to have the camera, I want to be able to ask
– and I do those on my own for myself, but I want that to be the larger
community. And I’m like, well, but it’s Saturday night, and we’re
only here from Monday through Friday, so do I get paid for those extra hours?

It’s like, if you work at the Esperanza, you want to be able to do that.
You will see that as fun and you won’t be counting the hours. If you count
the hours, then you shouldn’t be here because it’s going to kill
you. It is going to – you’re going to hate it. So I try to tell
people, if you don’t – just go away – go away now before you
start hating the organization, before you start hating me, because it can’t
be about that. It has to be just your passion and your love. That has to drive
you, your desire to see these stories.

So, yeah, it’s videotaped; it has to be transcribed. It’s videotaped.
How can you write the poetry to it? Or how can you work with someone to do that?
How do you enable them to do that themselves? There may be some elders that
want to scan; there may be some that don’t want to.

But – so hopefully we can find enough – I mean, I just called up
a 40 years – 40- 50- year-old somebody, you know, who was one of those
that ended up videotaping there, and she had come to on or two of the platícas
that – and so, she’s just – we see the 30- to 50-year olds
as the in-betweens, the ones that have to connect the elders to the youth. So
I called her up, and I knew she didn’t have email – I just suspected,
and everybody’s already, well, give me all the addresses on email, and
I’m like not everybody’s there. And I said, you seem to be interested,
you did some good videotaping – I mean, asking of questions, and do you
still want to participate?

And she goes, yeah, I want to know. And I actually showed up one of those Saturdays
and nobody was there, so I was curious. I said, well, that’s the thing.
You need to come and you need to tell, and I know you’re working so –
are you going to be available during the week? And she goes, well, I work well.
Then you need to be able to tell them that Saturdays are better for you, or
after five, because of your work. And you need to say it, not just me, because
they’re going to fight me. But if the community is saying that then –
okay, well, I’ll do that, and I’m really interested, and what if
people come and train? Would you liked to be trained to do some oral history?
And she goes, yeah, I would love that because I need that. And she has an idea.
She’s been collecting her own photographs. She wants to maybe do a book
or something. It’s like that’s – we should give her the skills
to do whatever it is that they want to do, but –

MS. CORDOVA: Well, Graciela, I really like sort of closing with that because
I think that’s just a wonderful – you talked about all these possibilities
that are here, and what a good note to end on. [Laughter.] But is there anything
else that you think, I mean, for this Archives of American Art document –
is there anything that you think maybe we should mention or anything sort of
in closing, just to sort of give you your own voice and not have me asking you
any questions of you.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Again, I mean, I think part of the passion for me is that
I am homegrown, born and raised here, right, and I’m doing my work at
home. So there is some of that, and I think that’s what makes the Esperanza
really special, that most people are from this community.

And so when people say, can there be an Esperanza in L.A. or San Francisco
or other places – it can, but I’m supposed to help them duplicate
that. The only way to duplicate that is if they’re from their respective
communities or from that area. And so they may not be from L.A. but if they
grew up 20 miles away from there and now live in L.A. but they’re really
interested in saying, this is for me – I mean, it’s the whole self-determination.

When I lived in Cuba, people said, why aren’t you organizing the gay
Cubans? It’s like, because that’s not my home and I can’t
determine for that – my needs and my desires for them there because that’s
not my reality. I can come back home and struggle here for gay rights for my
community but I can’t do it for the Cubanos. And how dare I be just as
oppressive a missionary or – to come. And I remember fighting people for
going to Cuba and saying how horrible it was. And to see how it changes, right,
that South Africa has the constitution that does say that gay people are equal
and all that sort of stuff, but that what wraps around their imagery is the
rainbow flag that comes out of the United States. That is not their own imagery,
that they’re not looking to see what South Africa queer history is. So
that in the same thing that is – lesbians are – that we can –
when I’m in Palenque, that I can be talking to people that are telling
me about pre-classical matriarchal society that is X, Y, and Z, and it’s
like, ah, that’s where – and again – [inaudible] – what
Anzaldúa does it so well when she’s looking for her own community.

And I guess that’s it to the extent that the reason I might have patience,
the reason that I have love and desire, and that I hope other people come in
to the struggle is because somehow there is that self-determination; it is that,
again, Chiapas, and autonomy. What Chiapanecos also say is that you have to
do it in your own homes, and you have struggle here, and that’s –
but it’s so much easier to go somewhere else and do it for other people,
or where it’s really exciting, so it’s, let’s go to visit
and fight with the Zapatistas or the Sandanistas or the – when it’s
not as – it hasn’t – it’s not the Hollywood, it’s
not exciting, nobody comes here and gives us any – give us – mainly
it’s a lot of hard stuff and mainly it’s struggling with each other
and all of this shit that we’ve learned, that it’s real damaging.

I mean, and people come to this space very damaged and then we lash out at
each other. And I can’t – and it’s hard. Again, I don’t
know why. I think when people hear all those stories of how hard it is and if
I really were to tell the places where I hurt, most people wouldn’t stick
around, but the reality is that we all – and wherever we find ourselves,
with our own lovers, with our children, with our best friends, we’re all
damaged and we come, and sometimes it’s hard, but it is that place that
we have to go to so that way we can release ourselves of that shit to be able
to deal with each other’s sexism, racism, and homophobia.

What does it mean to work with a woman of color in a position of power? What
hurts me the most is that I am suddenly seen as this person that has a lot of
power and they want to just – ah, well you’re the executive director,
you have a title, and it’s like, not because I want it, but if you pay
attention to the way I do leadership, you’ll notice that you’re
sitting right there next to me as we’re speaking to people from another
country, and you’re 22, and I’m 42, and so, do you see that I don’t
take power and hierarchy in the same way that when you start disliking what’s
happening here, you can’t use the same story. It’s not the same
story.

What does it mean? And you’re a middle-class Chicana who has even more
education than I do, and I grew up in working-class, so even the difference
between class, and how you feel comfortable in this space and the world, and
how you speak with the language versus me. And I kind of mumble and stumble,
or you write better than I do. What does that mean? Or the fact that you don’t
have me leading you like the way you want me to lead you because you want to
me to be clear, and it’s taken me this long to be clear. I still mumble,
I still struggle, and again, my leadership is still bringing everybody else
together.

So you can’t then just say, I’m like the white man that rules the
city. I’m not one of those 17 white men. There is no way. So be more critical.
If you’ve been learning the language, and learn and study to do analysis
in a critical way, then you’ve got to do it for this institution too,
and I think so many people go to those same places of just creating a hierarchy
here in the Esperanza, and the director, and some of the elder board members
that suddenly have all this power, and whatever, and the young people –
and it’s like, young people have been here, young people are now coming
back in their 30s and their 40s and saying, I get it now.

But in the meantime, what’s hurtful and harmful is that the anger, the
isms, the places that we have hurt, take us back to places where we want to
destroy institutions. So there are people that are wanting to hurt the Esperanza
and are willing to see that. And I see that happening with other organizations.
Like I just said it to somebody – it’s like, well, I’m going
to do research on the Guadalupe, and I’m going to do the same thing. Why?
What is the – I think it’s fine, but where is it going to –
are you going to share that with the Guadalupe board of directors and their
staff or are you going to put it out there to the local newspaper?

Because if it’s going to the newspaper, then go after the Witte Museum,
go after the McNay, go after San Antonio Museum of Art, because the same stuff
is happening there, but we never read about it, we never hear about; they keep
it quiet. They just fired their director – they just fired their director,
so the Guadalupe may have let go of their director but we’re ready to
criticize their own. That’s fine, I love the criticism, I don’t
mind it, but it’s not the same thing, and we’re always ready to
– what will the injury be to the Guadalupe, not just the Guadalupe, but
then to the larger community?

So that’s that challenge that I ask people to always – it’s
more complicated, it’s more complex, and when we do and look at these
organizations, these institutions, it’s not so simple to say, she’s
just a bad person, or she’s holding on to power or whatever. So that’s
all, I guess.

MS. CORDOVA: Well, there’s a lot of work to do. [Laughter.] We’ll
stop it there and I’ll just say thank you so much.

MS. SÁNCHEZ: Okay. Let me find that videotape and I’ll show it
to you.

[END]

This transcript is in the public domain and may be used without permission. Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Graciela Sanchez, 2004 June 25-July 2, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.